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MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 
IN THE CHILD AND THE RACE 

METHODS AND PROCESSES 



'^^ 



MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 



IN 



THE CHILD AND THE RACE 



METHODS AND PROCESSES 



BY 



JAMES MARK BALDWIN, M.A., Ph.D. 
i< 

Stuart Professor of Psychology in Princeton University; Author of 

"Handbook of Psychology," "Elements of Psychology"; 

Co-Editor of "The Psychological Review" 



WITH SEVENTEEN FIGURES AND TEN TABLES 



SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED 



Nefo fgotft 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
I903 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1894, 
By MACMILLAN AND CO. 



Set up and electrotyped February, 1895. Reprinted 
November, 1895; December, 1896; September, 1898; 
July, 1900 ; February, 1903. 



Vf 3*- 7 



NorfajootJ -IPwss 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 






FILIOLIS • MEIS 



PREFACE. 



In writing this book I have had rather conflicting aims. It 
was begun as a series of articles reporting observations on in- 
fants, published in part in the journal Science, 1890-1892. In 
the prosecution of this purpose, however, I found it necessary 
constantly to enlarge my scope for the entertainment of a wid- 
ened genetic view. This came to clearer consciousness in the 
treatment of the child's imitations, especially when I came to 
the relation of imitation to volition, as treated in my paper be- 
fore the London Congress of Experimental Psychology in 1892. 
The farther study of this subject brought what was to me such a 
revelation of the genetic function of imitation that I then deter- 
mined — under the inspiration, also, of the small group of writers 
lately treating the subject — to work out a theory of mental devel- 
opment in the child, incorporating this new insight. 

This occupied my thought, and was made the topic of my 
graduate Seminar in psychology at Princeton, in 1893-94, the 
result being the conviction that no consistent view of mental 
development in the individual could possibly be reached with- 
out a doctrine of the race development of consciousness, — 
i.e., the great problem of the evolution of mind. 

I then fell to reading again the literature of biological evolu- 
tion, with view to a possible synthesis of the current biological 
theory of organic adaptation with the doctrine of the infant's 
development, as my previous work had led me to formulate it. 
This is the problem of Spencer and Romanes. My book is then 



viii Preface. 

mainly a treatise on this problem; but the method of approach 
to it which I have described, accounts for the preliminaries and 
incidents of treatment which make my book so different in its 
topics and arrangement from theirs, and from any work constructed 
from the start with a ' System of Genetic Psychology ' in view. 

For this reason the question of arrangement was an excessively 
difficult one to me. The relations of individual development 
to race development are so intimate — the two are so identical, 
in fact — that no topic in the one can be treated with great 
clearness without assuming results in the other. So any order of 
treatment in such a work must seem finally to be only the least 
of possible evils. 

My final arrangement of chapters presents, however, when a 
patient reader is in front of the page, a fair degree of reason, I 
think. The earliest chapters (I. to VI.) are devoted to the 
statement of the genetic problem, with reports of the facts of 
infant life and the methods of investigating them, and the mere 
teasing out of the strings of law on which the facts are beaded — 
the principles of Suggestion, Habit, Accommodation, etc. These 
chapters have their own end as well, giving researches of some 
value, possibly, for psychology and education. They serve their 
purpose also in the progress of the book, as giving a statement 
of the central problem of motor adaptation. Chapter V. gives a 
detailed analysis of one voluntary function, Handwriting. Then 
follows the theory of adaptation, stated in general terms in Chap- 
ters VII. and VIII.; and afterwards comes a genetic view in 
detail (Chaps. IX. to XVI.) of the progress of mental devel- 
opment in its great stages, Memory, Association, Attention, 
Thought, Self-consciousness, Volition. So the whole is a whole, 
the theory resting upon an induction of facts (put before it) and 
supported by the deduction of facts (put after). 



Preface. ix 

The book really represents, therefore, five years of very close 
work; and the distribution of the topics over this period accounts 
for the fact that the chapters, in many instances, include in 
more or less modified form articles which I have contributed to 
the reviews. It will now be clear that all were written in the 
course of development of one intellectual impulse, and so have 
their only adequate presentation and justification in this volume. 
I am indebted to the editors and publishers of certain journals 
for this present use of some of the material, e.g.. Mind, The 
Philosophical Review, The Psychological Review, The American 
Journal of Psychology, The Popular Science Monthly, The Cen- 
tury Magazine, Science, The Educational Review. 

There are certain other great provinces, besides, which I find 
capable of fruitful exploration with the same theoretical prin- 
ciples. Of course, genetic psychology ought to lay the only solid 
foundation for education, both in its method and its results. 
And it is equally true, though it has never been adequately real- 
ized, that it is in genetic theory that social or collective psychol- 
ogy must find both its root and its ripe fruitage. We have no 
social psychology, because we have had no doctrine of the socius. 
We have had theories of the ego and the alter ; but that they did 
not reveal the socius is just their condemnation. So the theorist 
of society and institutions has floundered in seas of metaphysics 
and biology, and no psychologist has brought him a life-preserver, 
nor even heard his cry for help. These aspects of the subject I 
hope to take up in the same modest way in another work, already 
well under way, to bear the same general title as this volume, but 
to be known by the sub-title Interpretations : Educational, Social, 
and Ethical, in contrast with the Methods and Processes, by 
which this book is described more particularly on the title-page. 
It will endeavour to find a basis in the natural history of man as 



x Preface. 

a social being for the theory and practice of the activities in 
which his life of education, social co-operation, and duty involves 
him. 

Many of the particular points of view of this proposed work 
are indicated by foot-notes in this volume, on pages where the 
principles discussed strike deeper into the social life. Such 
intimations are especially brought out in Chapters X. to XVI. 

The classes of men whom I hope therefore to interest are first, 
of course, psychologists, — in my theories, — and then teachers 
and writers on education — in the outcome. I have not had the 
latter class in mind as much in this book as I do in the later 
one, for obvious reasons; but yet I hope the treatment will be 
found untechnical enough to profit teachers who are not professed 
psychologists. To this end all the original observations and 
experiments on children which are scattered through the book 
are gathered in a list in Appendix I. 

Then there are the biologists — one almost despairs of them ! 
Are there any yet born to follow the two I have named in finding 
mind as interesting as life ? We must believe that the future is 
big with them, — and the near future, too. But if any biologist 
is willing to listen, he may care to recognize in the chorus of 
those who are singing the praise of the ruler of our time, the 
naturalist, and playing to him on instruments — the tibia of the 
archaic horse, the antennae of the hymenoptera, the many stops 
of the hydra's legs — the plaintive note of one who but tries to 
interpret the wail of the human babe ! But I am not prepared 
to dispute the point with any of my readers who find such an 
expectation quite too optimistic. 

There is one point in the range of the great topic of develop- 
ment itself to which I wish to refer, in order to avoid misun- 
derstanding. I believe in the widest possible expansion of the 



Preface. xi 

idea of natural history as applied to consciousness. But I also 
believe that the natural history question is not the same as the 
question of the essence or nature or explanation of mind. Phil- 
osophy has its problem just the same, however consciousness 
arose, and no amount of evolution theory can settle the problem 
set by philosophy. I hope to take up this question of origin 
vs. nature in the later volume of ' Interpretations.' In the mean- 
time it may serve to inform any who may take my book seriously 
enough to care what my metaphysical views are, to say that, as 
far as I am willing to label them beforehand, they fall in the very 
indefinite category known to some under the phrase ' Ethical or 
Spiritual Idealism.' This declaration may be the more appro- 
priate since it is not the type of thought which is represented by 
the two men to whom my allusions above show something of my 
sense of profound and lasting indebtedness in the development 
of the main topic of this book, — Herbert Spencer and the late 
lamented George John Romanes. 

I wish in conclusion to express my personal indebtedness to 
my friends, James McKeen Cattell, William James, and Henry 
Fairfield Osborn, — especially to the first named, — for reading 
each more or less of my manuscripts, and making suggestions 
utilized in the text. My thanks are also due to my friend and 
assistant, Mr. H. C. Warren, for assistance with the proof-sheets. 

Princeton, N. J., March, 1895. J' M * B * 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

The demand for a new edition of my book gives me the opportunity to 
make certain minor corrections throughout. The only important alteration 
is to be found in the tables (I. and II.) on p. 52, in which certain columns 
had been substituted from other tables which lie unpublished among my 
papers. 

J. M. B. 

Princeton, October, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Pages 

Infant and Race Psychology 1-35 

§ 1. Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis, the Genetic Point of View 1-15 

§2. Race Psychology : Phylogenesis 12-15 

§3. Analogies of Development : Epochs of Development . . 15-20 
§ 4. Variations in Ontogeny : Organic and Mental Recapitula- 
tion 20-35 

CHAPTER II. 

A New Method of Child Study 36-49 

§ 1. Critical: Earlier Methods 36-42 

§ 2. Expository : the Dynamogenic Method .... 42-47 

§ 3. Formula of the Dynamogenic Method .... 47~49 

CHAPTER III. 

Distance and Colour Perception by Infants .... 50-57 

§ 1. Experimental: Colour, Distance 5°~55 

§2. Critical: Estimate of Results 55—57 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Origin of Right-handedness . 59-89 

§ 1. Experimental: Arrangements and Results . . . . 59-65 
§ 2. Interpretation : Neurological and Race Considerations ; 

Modification of Formula of Method .... 65-80 

CHAPTER V. 

Infants' Movements 81-103 

§ 1. Descriptive: Reflexes; the Child's Drawings; Rise of 

Tracery Imitation 81-91 



xiv Contents. 

§ 2. Interpretation of Tracery Imitation : The Origin and An- Pages 
alysis of Handwriting 91-103 

CHAPTER VI. 

Suggestion. 104-169 

§ 1. Definition and Criticism ....... 104-109 

§2. Physiological Suggestion 109-115 

§ 3. Sensori-motor : General, Personality, Deliberative Sugges- 
tion 1 15-130 

§ 4. Ideo-motor : Simple Imitative Suggestion, Resume of 

Suggestions of Infancy 130-135 

§5. Subconscious Adult Suggestion: Tune-suggestion, Influ- 
ence of Dreams, Auto-suggestion, Sense-exaltation . 135-143 
§ 6. Inhibitory Suggestion : Pain, Control, and Contrary Sug- 
gestion ; Bashfulness 143-158 

§7. Hypnotic Suggestion : the Facts, the Theory . . . 158-165 

§8. The Law of Dynamogenesis : Habit and Accommodation 165-169 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Theory of Development 170-220 

§ 1. Organic Adaptation in General 170-180 

§ 2. The Current Theory of Adaptation: Darwin, Spencer, 

Bain 180-204 

§ 3. Development and Heredity : Neo-Darwinism and Neo- 

Lamarkism 204-208 

§4. The Origin of Consciousness . . . . . . 208-214 

§ 5. Outcome : Habit and Accommodation .... 214-220 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Origin of Motor Attitudes and Expressions . . . 221-262 

§1. General View 221-223 

§ 2. The Theory of ' Emotional Expression ' : Applications of 

Principles of Habit, Accommodation, Dynamogenesis 223-237 

§ 3. Hedonic Expression and its Law 2 37 _2 39 

§ 4. Habitual Motor Attitudes : Principles of Antithesis, Asso- 
ciated Habits, Analogous Stimuli .... 239^262 



Contents. 



xv 



CHAPTER IX. 

Pages 

Organic Imitation 263-290 

§ 1. The General Question 263-268 

§ 2. The Neurological Question 268-279 

§ 3. The Physical Basis of Memory and Association . . 279-290 



CHAPTER X. 

Conscious Imitation (begun) : The Origin of Memory and 

Imagination 291-321 

§ 1. General Facts and Explanations 291-301 

§ 2. The Origin of Memory and Association .... 301-307 

§ 3. Assimilation and Recognition 308-319 

§ 4. Phylogenetic Value of Memory and Imagination . . 319-321 



CHAPTER XI. 

Conscious Imitation (continued) : The Origin of Thought 

and Emotion 322-348 

§ 1 . Conception and Thought 322-330 

§ 2. Conception as Class-recognition 33°-33 2 

§3. Emotion and Sentiment : Self and the Social Sense . . 332-348 

CHAPTER XII. 

Conscious Imitation (concluded) 349-366 

§ 1. Classification 349-352 

§ 2. Plastic Imitation . . 352-356 

§ 3. How to observe Imitation in Children .... 357-366 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Origin of Volition 367-430 

§1. Analysis of Volition : Deliberation, Desire, Effort . . 367-373 
§ 2. The Typical Case of Rise of Volition in the Child : Per- 
sistent Imitation 373—385 

§ 3. Phylogenetic 385-388 

§ 4. Special Evidence 388-426 

§ 5. Ontogenetic : Variations in the Rise of Volition . . 426-430 



xvi Contents. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Pages 

The Mechanism of Revival : Internal Speech and Song . 431-450 

§ 1. Internal Speech: How do we think of Words? . . 432-438 

§ 2. Internal Song: How do we think of Tunes? . . . 438-442 

§ 3. Pitch Recognition: How do we know Notes? . . 442-450 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Origin of Attention 451-475 

§ 1. Voluntary Attention 451-458 

§2. Reflex. and -Primary' Attention . . . . . 458-459 
§ 3. The Development of Attention: Sensori-motor Associa- 
tion 459-472 

§ 4. Voluntary Acquisition and Control 472-475 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Summary: Final Statement of Habit and Accommodation . 476-488 

§ 1. Summary of Theory of Development .... 476-480 

§ 2. Interaction of Habit and Accommodation . . . 480-481 

§ 3« Organic Centralization : Pain, Attention .... 481-488 



APPENDIX A. Glossary of New Observations on Chil- 
dren 489-490 

APPENDIX B. Colonel Mallery on Sign Languages . . 490-492 

INDEX .... ° ..... . . . 493-496 



MENTAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE 
CHILD AND THE RACE. 

CHAPTER I. 

Infant and Race Psychology. 

The study of psychology has had so remarkable a de- 
velopment in recent years, and the standpoint from which 
it is now approached is so unlike the point of view of 
older writers on mental philosophy, that the several de- 
partments which it now comprises stand in need of sepa- 
rate introductions ; and not only are such introductions 
necessary for purposes of exposition, but their apologetic 
function, though reduced to a minimum, is still real. The 
expression 'nursery psychologist' no doubt means what 
its author intended it to mean, to some others than him- 
self ; and it is desirable that it should be understood by 
the educated public as a badge of honourable service 
rather than as a phrase of disparagement and discredit. 

§ i. Infant Psychology: Ontogenesis. 

No doubt we owe to the rise of the evolution idea some- 
thing at least of the benefit brought about by what we may 
call the psychological renaissance of the last twenty-five 



2 Infant and Race Psychology. 

or thirty years. The breadth of the current conception of 
psychology is certainly in harmony with the conceptions 
long ago current in other departments of scientific research ; 
but there is a phase of this broadening of psychological 
inquiry strikingly brought out only when interpreted in 
the light of evolution doctrine. This is what we may 
call the genetic phase, the growth phase. The older idea 
of the soul was of a fixed substance, with fixed attributes. 
Knowledge of the soul was immediate in consciousness, 
and adequate ; at least, as adequate as such knowledge 
could be made. The mind was best understood where 
best or most fully manifested ; its higher ' faculties,' even 
when not in operation, were still there, but asleep. 

Under such a conception, the man was father to the 
child. What the adult consciousness discovers in itself 
is true, and wherein the child lacks it falls short of the 
true stature of soul life. We must, therefore, if we take 
account of the child-mind at all, interpret it up to the reve- 
lations of the man-mind. If the adult consciousness shows 
the presence of principles not observable in the child con- 
sciousness, we must suppose, nevertheless, that they are 
really present in the child consciousness beyond the reach 
of our observation. The old argument was this, — and it 
is not too old to be found in the metaphysics of to-day, — 
consciousness reveals certain great ideas as simple and 
original : consequently they must be so. If you do not 
find them in the child-mind, then you must read them 
into it. 

The genetic idea reverses all this. Instead of a fixed 
substance, we have the conception of a growing, develop- 
ing activity. Functional psychology succeeds faculty psy- 
chology. Instead of beginning with the most elaborate 



Infant Psychology: Ontogenesis, 3 

exhibition of this growth and development, we shall find 
most instruction in the simplest activity that is at the 
same time the same activity. Development is a process 
of involution as well as of evolution, and the elements 
come to be hidden under the forms of complexity which 
they build up. Are there principles in the adult con- 
sciousness which do not appear in the child consciousness, 
then the adult consciousness must, if possible, be inter- 
preted by principles present in the child consciousness ; 
and when this is not possible, the conditions under which 
later principles take their rise and get their development 
must still be adequately explored. 

Now that this genetic conception has arrived, it is aston- 
ishing that it did not arrive sooner, and it is astonishing 
that the ' new ' psychology has hitherto made so little use 
of it. The difference between description and explanation 
is as old as science itself. What chemist long remains 
satisfied with a description of the substances found in 
nature? He is no investigator at all. His science was 
not born until he became an analyst. The student of phi- 
lology is not content with a description, a grammar, of 
spoken languages : he desiderates their reduction to com- 
mon vocal elements, and aims to discover the laws of their 
genetic development. But the mental scientist has called 
such description science, even when he has had examples 
of nature's own furnishing around him which would have 
confirmed or denied the results of mental analysis. 

The advantages which we look to infant psychology to 
furnish, meet just this need of analysis ; and the reason 
that the needed analysis is found here, is that the mind, 
like all other natural things, grows. This general state- 
ment may be put into concrete form under several points, 



4 Infant and Race Psychology. 

which divide this branch of general psychology from others 
now recognized. 

i. In the first place, the phenomena of the infant con- 
sciousness are simple, as opposed to reflective; that is, they 
are the child's presentations or memories simply, not his 
own observations of them. In the adult consciousness the 
disturbing influences of inner observation is a matter of 
notorious moment. It is impossible for me to know ex- 
actly what I feel, for the apprehending of it through the 
attention alters its character. My volition also is a com- 
plex thing of alternatives, one of which is my personal 
pride and self-conscious egotism. But the child's emotion 
is as spontaneous as a spring. The effects of it in the 
mental life come out in action, pure and uninfluenced by 
calculation and duplicity and adult reserve. There is 
around every one of us a web of convention and prejudice 
of our own making. Not only do we reflect the social for- 
malities of our environment, and thus lose the distinguish- 
ing spontaneities of childhood, but each one of us builds 
up his own little world of seclusion and formality with 
himself. We are subject not only to ' idols of the forum,' 
but also to * idols of the den.' 

The child, on the contrary, has not learned his own 
importance, his pedigree, his beauty, his social place, his 
religion, his paternal disgrace ; and he has not observed 
himself through all these and countless other lenses of 
time, place, and circumstance. He has not yet turned 
himself into an idol nor the world into a temple ; and we 
can study him apart from the complex accretions which 
are the later deposits of his self-consciousness. 

Perhaps one of the best illustrations we can find of the 
value of this consideration in the study of the child-mind 



Infant Psychology: Ontogenesis. 5 

is seen in the reversion to the child-type occasioned by 
hypnotism. One of the signal services of hypnotism, I 
think, is the demonstration of the intrinsic motor force of 
an idea. Any idea tends at once to realize itself in action. 
All conventionalities, proprieties, alternatives, hesitations, 
are swept away, and the developed mind reveals its skele- 
ton structure, so to speak, its composition from reactive 
elements. But hypnotism need not have been waited for 
to show this. The patient observation of the movements 
of a child during his first year would have put it among the 
safest generalizations of the science of mind. In the ab- 
sence of alternative considerations, reflections, the child 
acts, and act it must, on the first suggestion which has the 
faintest meaning in terms of its sensations of movement. 

2. The study of children is generally the only means of 
testing the truth of our mental analyses. If we decide 
that a certain complex product is due to a union of simpler 
mental elements, then we may appeal to the proper period 
of child-life to see the union taking place. The range of 
growth is so enormous from the infant to the adult, and 
the beginnings of the child's mental life are so low in the 
scale, in the matter of instinctive and mental endowment, 
that there is hardly a question of analysis now under 
debate which may not be tested by this method. 

On the other hand, that such confirmation shuts out 
most conclusively the advocates of irreducibility in many 
cases, seems to admit of no question. A good example 
of such analysis is seen in the distinction between simple 
consciousness and self -consciousness. Over and over 
again have systems been built upon the subject-object 
theory of consciousness ; namely, that personality, sub- 
jectivity, consciousness in any form necessarily impli- 



6 Infant and Race Psychology, 

cated an antithesis, in consciousness, between ego and 
non-ego. But an example of what is thus denied may be 
seen upon the floor of any nursery where there is a child 
less than six months of age. 

At this point it is that child psychology is more valu- 
able than the study of the consciousness of animals. The 
latter never become men, while children do. The ani- 
mals represent in some few respects a branch of the tree 
of growth in advance of man, while being in many other 
respects very far behind him. In studying animals we 
are always haunted by the fear that the analogy may not 
hold ; that some element essential to the development of 
the human mind may not discover itself at all. Even in 
such a question as the localization of the motor functions 
of the brain, where the analogy is one of comparative 
anatomy and only secondarily of psychology, the monkey 
presents analogies with man which dogs do not. But in 
the study of children we may be always sure that a nor- 
mal child has in him the promise of a normal man. 

The contrast between this branch of psychology and 
mental pathology also shows points of advantage on the 
side of the former. In the study of mental disease all 
the mental functions are or may be involved. We are 
never sure that functional connections and sympathies 
have not been developed in the growth of the personality 
as a whole, which are liable to derangement with other 
processes very remote from them. For example, instinct 
is modified by the growth of volition ; so that in cases of 
diseased volition, we do not find that the instincts corre- 
sponding to those of the creatures which do not attain 
volition are left intact. For this reason the application 
of the logical 'method of difference/ which consists in 



Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis. 7 

observing the change brought about in a phenomenon 
from the removal of part of its antecedent conditions, 
cannot be always relied upon. It is further true that, in 
the child, the whole nature is growing together, so that 
the absence of one function does not mean the violent 
uninhibited exercise of others, as is the case with diseased 
adult patients. 

One of the same difficulties confronts the student of 
animal pathology. The indefinite source of error called 
'shock' is always present. The organs left intact by 
the disease or by the operator, ' sympathize ' in the suf- 
ferings of the organism as a whole ; and sometimes loss 
of function is reported, when time afterwards repairs the 
damage. 

In dealing with the child, however, the same advantage 
of simplicity is secured without the corresponding disad- 
vantage of possible interference of functions. In other 
words, the simplicity of the child is normal simplicity, 
while the simplicity of disease or surgery is abnormal sim- 
plicity ; and the danger of what physicians call 'complica- 
tion ' is in the former case entirely ruled out. 

3. Again, in the study of the child-mind, we have the 
added advantage of a corresponding simplicity on the 
organic side ; that is, we are able to take account of 
the physiological processes at a time when they are rela- 
tively simple. I say 'relatively simple,' for in reality 
they are enormously complex at birth, and the embryolo- 
gist pushes his researches much farther back in the life- 
history of the organism. But yet they are simple relatively 
to their condition after the formation of habits, motor 
complexes, brain connections and associations ; in short, 
after the nervous system has been educated to its whole 



8 Infant and Race Psychology. 

duty in its living environment. For example : a psychol- 
ogy which holds that we have a 'speech faculty,' an 
original mental endowment which is incapable of further 
reduction, may appeal to the latest physiological research 
and find organic confirmation, at least as far as a deter- 
mination of its cerebral apparatus is concerned ; but such 
support for the position is wanting when we return to the 
brain of the infant. Not only do we fail to find the series 
of centres into which the organic basis of speech has been 
divided, but even those of them which we do find have 
not taken up the function, either alone or together, which 
they perform when speech is actually realized. In other 
words, the primary object of each of the various centres 
involved is not speech, but some other and simpler func- 
tion ; and speech arises by development from a union of 
these separate functions. 

We accordingly find a development of consciousness 
keeping pace with the development of the physical organ- 
ism. The extent of possible analogies between the growth 
of body and that of mind may thus be estimated from 
below ; and any outstanding facts of the inner life which 
cannot be correlated with facts of the physical organism 
get greater prominence and safer estimation. 

4. In observing young children, a more direct applica- 
tion of the experimental method is possible. 1 By ' experi- 
ment' here, I mean both experiment on the senses and 
also experiment directly on consciousness by suggestion, 
social influence, etc. In experimenting on adults, great 
difficulties arise through the fact that reactions — such as 
performing a voluntary movement when a signal is heard, 

1 On the nature and application of experiment in psychology, see my Hand- 
book of Psychology, I., 2d ed., pp. 25-31. 



Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis. 9 

etc., — are broken at the centre by deliberation, habitual 
desire, choice, etc., and closed again by a conscious volun- 
tary act. The subject hears a sound, identifies it, and 
presses a button — if he choose and agree to do so. What 
goes on in this interval between the advent of the incoming 
nerve process and the discharge of the outgoing nerve proc- 
ess ? Something, at any rate, which represents a brain 
process of great complexity. Now, anything that fixes this 
sensori-motor connection or simplifies the central process, 
in so far gives greater certainty to the results. For this 
reason, experiments on reflex reactions are valuable and 
decisive where similar experiments on voluntary reactions 
are uncertain and of doubtful value. Now the fact that 
the child consciousness is relatively simple, and so offers 
a field for more fruitful experiment, is illustrated in what 
is said in the following pages about suggestion in infant 
life ; it is also seen in the mechanical reactions of an 
infant to strong stimuli, such as bright colors, etc. 1 Of 
course, this is the point where originality must be exer- 
cised in the devising and executing of experiments. After 
the subject is a little better developed, new experimentation 
will be as difficult here as in the other sciences ; but at 
present the simplest phenomena of child life and activity 
are open to the investigator. 

With this inadequate review of the advantages of infant 
psychology, it is well also to point out the dangers of the 
abuse of such a branch of inquiry. Such dangers are real. 
The very simplicity which seems to characterize the life 
of the child is often extremely misleading, and misleading 
because the simplicity in question is not always typical, 

1 See below, Chaps. III. to VI. 



io Infant and Race Psychology. 

but may be to a degree individual. Mr. Spencer had a 
large range of facts in view when he said that organic 
development involved progress not only in complexity, but 
also in definiteness ; and the distinction between simplic- 
ity which indicates mere absence of complexity, and that 
which indicates definiteness of function as well, applies 
with great force to mental growth. Two nervous reactions 
may appear equally simple ; but one may be an adaptive 
reaction learned with great pains and really very complex 
in its elements, while the other may be inadaptive and 
really simple. So a state of infant consciousness may 
seem to involve no complexity or integration, and yet 
turn out to represent, by very apparent reason of its sim- 
plicity and definiteness, a mass of individual or race experi- 
ence. It is a corollary from this that children differ under 
the law of heredity very remarkably, even in the simplest 
manifestations of their conscious lives. It is never safe, 
except under the qualifications mentioned below, to say, 
'This child did, consequently all children must.' The most 
we can usually say in observing single infants is, 'This 
child did, consequently another child may.' Yet the 
uncertainties of the case may be summed up and avoided 
if certain principles of mental development are kept in 
view. 

i. In the first place, we can fix no absolute time in the 
history of the mind at which a certain mental function 
takes its rise. The observations, now quite extensively 
recorded, and sometimes quoted as showing that the first 
year, or the second year, etc., brings such and such devel- 
opments, tend, on the contrary, to show that such divisions 
do not hold in any strict sense. Like any organic growth, 
the nervous system may develop faster under more favour- 



Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis, n 

able conditions, or more slowly under less favourable ; and 
the growth of mental faculty is largely dependent upon 
such organic growth. Only in broad outline and by the 
widest generalization can such epochs be marked off 
at all. 

2. The possibility of the occurrence of a mental phe- 
nomenon must be distinguished from its necessity. The 
occurrence of a single clearly observed event is decisive 
only against the theory according to which its occurrence 
under the given conditions may not occur; that is, the 
cause of the event is proved not to lie among agencies 
or conditions which are absent. For example : the very 
early adaptive movements of the infant in receiving its 
food cannot be due to volition ; but the case is still open 
as to the question what is the sufficient reason of their 
presence, i.e. y how much nervous development is present, 
how much experience is necessary, etc. It is well to 
emphasize the fact that one case may be decisive in over- 
throwing a theory, but the conditions are seldom simple 
enough to make one case decisive in establishing a theory. 

3. It follows from the principle of growth itself that the 
order of development of the mental functions is constant, 
and normally free from variation ; consequently, the most 
fruitful observations of children are those which show that 
such a function was present before another could be ob- 
served. The complexity becomes finally so remarkable 
that there seems to be no before or after at all in mental 
things ; but if the child's processes show stages in which any 
element is clearly absent, we have at once light upon the 
law of growth. For example : if a single case is conclu- 
sively established of a child's drawing an inference before 
it begins to use words or significant vocal sounds, the one 



12 Infant and Race Psychology, 

case is as good as a thousand to show that thought de- 
velops to a degree independently of spoken language. 1 

4. While the most direct results are acquired by syste- 
matic experiments with a given point in view, still general 
observations kept regularly, and carefully recorded, are 
important for the interpretation which a great many such 
records may afford in the end. In the multitude of expe- 
riences here, as everywhere, there is strength. Such ob- 
servations should cover everything about the child, — his 
movements, cries, impulses, sleep, dreams, personal pref- 
erences, muscular efforts, attempts at expression, games, 
favourites, etc., — and should be recorded in a regular day- 
book at the time of occurrence. What is important and 
what is not, is, of course, something to be learned ; and it 
is extremely desirable that any one contemplating such 
observations should acquaint himself beforehand with the 
principles of general psychology and physiology, espe- 
cially the former, and seek also the practical advice of a 
trained observer. 2 

§ 2. Race Psychology : Phylogenesis. 

If we adopt a distinction in terminology which the biol- 
ogists use, and call the development of a single life or 
mind its ontogenesis, and, on the other hand, call the life 
history of the race, or of consciousness in all the forms of 
animal life, the phylogenesis of mind, it will be seen that 
what I have said about infant psychology falls under the 

1 Yet even this rule is subject to the modifications given below in this chap- 
ter, § 4, II. 

2 I hope, in another work, devoted to { Interpretations ' of some of the prin- 
ciples which this book discusses, to give some practical directions to readers 
who desire to observe children usefully; see also Chap. XII., § 3, below. 



Infant Psychology : Phylogenesis. 13 

former head. Before we proceed to take up the special 
questions to which this book is devoted, it may be well to 
indicate the place of phylogenetic inquiry. 

The phrase 'Race Psychology' is commonly used in a 
narrow sense, having reference to the characteristic men- 
tal peculiarities of various peoples, tribes, stages of civili- 
zation, cults, etc. That is, the word 'race' is applied to 
the human race. The points of comparison, on the other 
hand, between human and animal consciousness, fall under 
so-called Comparative Psychology. I take the liberty, 
however, of extending the meaning of the former phrase 
to include the history of consciousness, very much as the 
phrase ' race experience ' is used to include the full wealth 
of inheritance derived, as it is held to be, from ancestral 
life of whatever kind. The problem of ' race psychology ' 
then becomes the problem of the phylogenetic develop- 
ment of consciousness, just as 'individual psychology' 
deals with its ontogenetic development, both being legiti- 
mate branches of genetic as opposed to functional psy- 
chology. 

The question of race psychology, as thus understood, 
is an extremely important and, until very lately, a greatly 
neglected question. The presumption in favour of mental 
phylogenesis, arising from the modern evolution theory in 
biology, cannot be duly weighed without the most careful 
and detailed comparative work and the fairest interpreta- 
tion of the concomitance existing between nervous and 
mental growth everywhere. As far as theoretical human 
psychology has to do with questions of the nature of mind, 
as opposed to questions of function, it is, I hold, largely 
independent of questions of origin ; but in as far as data 
of origin must be included in the answer to questions of 



14 Infant and Race Psychology, 

function, just so far do they come to throw light on the 
deeper problems of the nature of the mind as well. 1 

Assuming, then, that there is a phylogenetic problem, 
— that is, assuming that mind has had a natural history 
in the animal series, — we are at liberty to use what we 
know of the correspondence between nerve process and 
conscious process, in man and the higher animals, to arrive 
at hypotheses for its solution : 2 to expect general analogies 
to hold between nervous development and mental develop- 
ment, one of which is the deduction of race history epochs 
from individual history epochs through the repetition of 
phylogenesis in ontogenesis, called in biology 'Recapitu- 
lation ' ; to view the plan of development of the two series 
of facts taken together as a common one in race history, 
as we are convinced it is in individual history by an over- 
whelming weight of evidence ; to accept the criteria estab- 
lished by biological research on one side of this corre- 
spondence, — the organic, — while we expect biology to 
accept the criteria established on the other side by psy- 
chology ; and, finally, to admit with equal freedom the 
possibility of an absolute beginning of either series at 
points, if such be found, at which the best conceived 
criteria on either side fail of application. For example : if 
biology has the right to make it a legitimate problem 
whether the organic exhibits a kind of function over and 

1 For further remarks on * Origin vs. Nature,' see the Preface. 

2 Such a hypothesis is that of a ' uniform psycho-physical connection ' 
which is commonly held to apply in two great spheres in which it has not 
as yet been proved, viz., the sphere of volition (see, however, Chapter XIV. 
below) on the one hand, and that of the lower nervous centres on the other. 
The two questions which uniformity supposes answered in the affirmative are 
accordingly: has volition a nervous process? and, do the lower nervous 
ganglia have consciousness? 



Analogies of Development. 15 

above that supplied by the chemical affinities which are 
the necessary presuppositions of life, then the psychologist 
has the equal right, after the same candid rehearsal of the 
facts in support of his criteria, to submit for examination 
the claim, let us say, that * judgments of worth' represent 
a kind of deliverance which vital functions as such do not 
give rise to. 

The chapters of this book will be found, in various 
places, to involve all these determinations respecting ge- 
netic psychology. One of them, however, — that which 
relates to the analogy between individual and race growth, 
— carries so many preliminary suggestions and yet has 
received so little enforcement in the literature of the 
topic, that it is well to present it at the outset with greater 
fulness. 

§ 3. Analogies of Development. 

Students of biology consider the argument for organic 
evolution especially strong in view of the analogy between 
race and individual development. The individual in em- 
bryo passes through stages which represent morphologi- 
cally, to a degree, the stages actually found in the ancestral 
animal series. 1 A similar analogy, when inquired into on 
the side of consciousness, seems on the surface true, since 
we find more and more developed stages of conscious func- 
tion in a series corresponding in the main with the stages 
of nervous growth in the animals ; and then we find this 
growth paralleled in its great features in the mental devel- 
opment of the human infant. 

1 A recent popular statement of the facts in the case of the embryos of the 
frog and man is given by Kingsley in the article ' Evolution/ in Johnsoris 
Universal Cyclopcedia (new edition, 1894). 



1 6 Infant and Race Psychology. 

The race series seems to require, both on organic 
grounds and from evidence regarding consciousness, a de- 
velopment whose major terms are somewhat in this order, 1 
i.e., simple contractility with the organic analogue of pleas- 
ure and pain ; nervous integration corresponding to special 
sense functions, including the congeries of muscular sen- 
sations, and some adaptive movements ; nervous integra- 
tion to a degree to which corresponds mental presentation 
of objects with higher motor organization and reflex atten- 
tion ; greater co-ordination, having on the conscious side 
memory, conscious imitation, impulse, instinct, instinctive 
emotion ; finally, cerebral function with conscious thought, 
voluntary action, and ideal emotion. Without insisting on 
the details of this sketch — intended at this point for no 
more than a sketch — certain great epochs of functional 
differentiation may be clearly seen. First, the epoch of 
the rudimentary sense processes, the pleasure and pain 
process, and simple motor adaptation, called for conven- 
ience the ' affective epoch ' : second, the epoch of pre- 
sentation, memory, imitation, defensive action, instinct, 
which passes by gradations into, third, the epoch of 
complex presentation, complex motor co-ordination, of 
conquest, of offensive action, and rudimentary volition. 
These, the second and third together, I should charac- 
terize, on the side of consciousness, as the ' epoch of 
objective reference': and, finally, the epoch of thought, 
reflection, self-assertion, social organization, union of 
forces, co-operation; the 'epoch of subjective reference,' 
which, in human history, merges into the 'social and 
ethical epoch.' 

In the animal world these terms form a series — evident 

1 Some of these points have discussion in later chapters. 



Analogies of Development, ij 

enough on the surface — its terms not sharply divided 
from one another, not in most instances exclusive before 
and after; but representing great places for emphasis, 
stages of safe acquirement, and outlooks for further 
growth. So we find the invertebrates, the lower verte- 
brates, the higher vertebrates up to, or somewhere near, 
man, and man — four stages. 

The analogy of this series, again, with that of the 
infant's growth, is, in the main, very clear : the child 
begins in its prenatal and early post-natal experience with 
blank sensations and pleasure and pain with the motor 
adaptations to which they lead, passes into a stage of 
apprehension of objects with response to them by 'sug- 
gestion,' imitation, etc., gets to be more or less self-con- 
trolled, imaginative, and volitional, and ultimately becomes 
reflective, social, and ethical. 

On the side of consciousness, however, we are able 
safely to divide our functional epochs a little more mi- 
nutely, and in those of the following chapters in which 
ontogenetic development is our main point of inquiry, 
this is done. 

A single further distinction is in point here, however; a 
distinction also further justified in a subsequent connec- 
tion. 1 It is evident that if the objective epoch precedes 
the subjective — if the child gets objects and reacts upon 
them without reflection, first, and only later deliberates 
upon their meaning to himself, and then aims at his own 
pleasure or profit in his behaviour toward them — it is 
evident that there will be a great difference between the 
way he looks at other persons at these two stages of his 

1 Below, Chap. VI., § 3, and Chap. XI., § 3; also the volume of 'Inter- 
pretations ' which is to follow this work (in locJ). 



1 8 Infant and Race Psychology. 

growth respectively. Before he understands himself, that 
is, during the objective epoch, he cannot understand others, 
except as they are also objects of a certain kind ; but in 
learning to understand himself, he also comes to understand 
them, as like himself, that is, as themselves having objects 
to act toward and upon just as he does. Here are, there- 
fore, four very distinct phases of the child's experience of 
persons not himself, all subsequent to his purely affective 
or pleasure-pain epoch ; first, persons are simply objects, 
parts of the material going on to be presented, mainly 
sensations which stand out strong, etc. ; second, persons 
are very peculiar objects, very interesting, very active, very 
arbitrary, very portentous of pleasure or pain. If we con- 
sider these objects as fully presented, i.e., as in due rela- 
tionship to one another in space, projected out, and thought 
of as external, and call such objects again projects, then 
persons at this stage may be called personal projects. They 
have certain peculiarities afterwards found by the child to 
be the attributes of personality ; third, his own actions 
issuing from himself, largely by imitation, as we shall see, 
in response to the requirements of this 'projective' en- 
vironment, having his own organism as their centre and 
his own consciousness as their theatre, give him light 
on himself as subject ; and, fourth, this light upon himself 
is reflected upon other persons to illuminate them as also 
subjects, and they to him then become ejects or social 
fellows. 

I insist upon this series of distinctions here, even though 
it be necessary to refer the reader ahead in my text for 
further justification of them ; since it is the fundamental 
disregard of them which has vitiated most of the earlier 
work in infant and social psychology. The familiar * psy- 



Analogies of Development. 19 

chologist's fallacy/ a fallacy which is so easy a refuge for 
inadequate insight, and so ready a screen for faulty analy- 
sis, will be permanently exposed only by the adoption of 
terms which forbid appeal to it. If by * project ' of per- 
sons we understand the infant's consciousness of others 
before he is conscious of himself, by * subject ' his con- 
sciousness of himself, and by 'eject,' as Clifford sug- 
gested, his consciousness of other persons as similar to 
himself, we have, I think, safer terms than before and, at 
the same time, full opportunity to define the content of 
each as the facts may require. 

The parallelism with animal development is quite clear 
from this new point of approach. The only stage for 
which an evident analogy has not been pointed out by 
other writers is that called 'projective.' Now in the fact 
of herding, common life and arrangements for the protec- 
tion of the herd, animal societies of various kinds, animal 
division of labour, etc., — whatever be the origin of it, — 
we have what seems to be such an epoch in animal life. 
These creatures show a real recognition of one individual 
by another, and a real community of life and reaction, 
which is quite different from the individualism of a purely 
sensational and unsocial consciousness. And yet it is 
just as different from the reflective organization of human 
society, in which the self-consciousness and personal voli- 
tion of the individual play the most important rdle. 1 I 
see no way of accounting for the gregarious instinct 
anywhere, except on the assumption of such an epoch of 
animal consciousness. 

We thus reach what I think is a valuable distinction in 

1 The ' social ' life of certain of the hymenoptera, notably bees and ants, 
illustrates an extreme ' projective ' social development embodied in instinct. 



20 Infant and Race Psychology. 

the interpretation of animal action, and avoid what has 
been a repetition of the ' psychologist's fallacy ' habitual 
with naturalists. It is just as great a mistake to account 
for human society in terms of the gregarious instinct of 
wolves, while yet not accounting for this instinct, as it is to 
explain human reflective altruism by the organic sympathy 
of the lioness with her cub. In each of these cases we 
are anticipating a later stage of a single process of growth, 
because, being at this later stage ourselves, we are able to 
anticipate it ; and by thus levelling the higher down to the 
lower, we are failing to recognize the essential process by 
which, and by which alone, all through the whole organic 
evolution, higher functional forms are reached by develop- 
ment from lower. 

§ 4. Variations in Ontogeny. 

Even in the great darkness which obscures the relation 
of race to individual development, two modifications seem 
plainly necessary of the common biological theory of Re- 
capitulation, according to which there is a strict parallel 
between them. 1 

I. The continued application of the principles of organic 
Habit and Accommodation, with the perpetuation of their 
results either by natural selection alone or with the in- 
heritance of characters acquired by individual creatures, 
leads to certain organic ' short-cuts' — the omission in fu- 

1 See also Chap. XVI., § 4, below. Perhaps the best and most readable 
statement of the present standing of the theory of ' Recapitulation ' is the late 
Prof. A. M. Marshall's President's Address before the British Association at 
Leeds in 1890, reprinted as Chap. XIII., 'The Recapitulation Theory,' in 
Marshall's Biological Lectures and Addresses (1894). The names associated 
with the theory are Ernst von Baer, Louis Agassiz, Fritz Muller, Haeckel, and 
Balfour. 



Variations in Ontogeny, 2i 

ture descendants of certain elements or stages which were 
necessary in the progress of their ancestors. 

Let us look first at Habit, and put the case, at the out- 
set, abstractly. A particular function involving elements 
a, b, c, etc., in a dog, for example, may, by the habitual 
exercise of this function, in later modes of life and differ- 
ent environment, come to involve only the elements a, c, 
etc. This is actually seen in well-known examples, such 
as the difference between dogs, together with rabbits and 
lower creatures generally, on one side, and monkeys and 
men on the other side, in regard to certain sense func- 
tions. If the cortical centre for sight be extirpated in a 
dog, he becomes temporarily blind, recovering his sight 
after some days by what is supposed to be the reinstate- 
ment of a lower centre in the function which belonged to 
it in ancestral forms ; this lower centre is the b of the 
a> b, c, series. But when monkeys or men lose their 
sight by reason of a lesion of the cortical centre for vision 
in the occipital lobe, they never recover it. In this case 
the lower centre has lost its ability to constitute itself a sight 
centre, — it is no longer necessary as a term in the series of 
organs involved in the function, — and a y c, etc., represents 
the series. This ' short-cut ' is inherited or selected and so 
represents a departure from phylogeny. As I have said 
elsewhere : " In organisms in which the reflex reactions 
predominate, in which the ' downward ' growth has led to 
the consolidation of the greater part of the system in 
ganglionic centres, we would expect that the higher func- 
tions, the centres for complex delicate movements, would 
be more dependent and unformed. Consequently, when 
they are interfered with, the ganglionic centres, being still 
in close anatomical connection with them, would regain 



22 Infant and Race Psychology. 

the function which they formerly performed. Thus sensori- 
motor ganglionic connections which have fallen into disuse 
through the growth of higher centres recover their lost 
activity under the stimulus of a serious and dangerous 
lesion. It is nothing more than a reversion of function 
by a reverse process of adaptation. On the other hand, 
in the case of man, the law of * upward' growth has 
reached its fullest application ; the cortical centres have 
become independent of their ganglionic confreres, and, in 
the loss of the former an irreparable damage is sustained. 
In this latter case, it is a general in the army who has 
fallen, and no subordinate officer can fill his place ; in the 
former case, it is a captain that is lost and his lieutenant is 
easily promoted." * 

Referring to this hypothesis which I have called the 
' short-cut ' theory, in its application to muscular move- 
ment, the application which has especial interest for us 
later on, Foster says : 2 "It is possible to maintain the 
thesis that man has become so developed as to his 
nervous system and the motor cortex, so accustomed to 
make use exclusively of the pyramidal system, that the 
will has lost the power, still possessed by the lower 
animals, to gain access by some path other than the 
pyramidal one, to the immediate nervous mechanisms of 
thought." 

The practical result, in the case of this particular 
illustration, which recurs to us in a later discussion, 3 may 
be put very briefly thus : it is possible that animals may 
perform movements which seem to be voluntary, with a ner- 

1 Handbook of Psychology, Vol. II., p. 46. 

2 Textbook of Physiology, 5th ed., III., p. 1062. 

3 Below, Chap. XIII. 



Variations in Ontogeny. 23 

vous apparatus which would be inadequate to their volun- 
tary performance by the child or the man} And this is to 
say that man in his individual development does not pass 
through the stage represented by the animal's performance 
of this function with this apparatus. 

In the fact of Accommodation or adaptation, we find a 
similar influence at work to modify the strict parallel re- 
quired by the theory of Recapitulation. By accommoda- 
tion, with the new adaptations which it works, old habits 
are broken up, and new co-ordinations are made, which are 
more complex, or new organic growths secured, which sim- 
plify a function. These gains are again clenched by he- 
redity or selection and constitute further variations from 
phylogeny. This is particularly evident in volition. Fos- 
ter again notes this in the quotation which follows, citing 
the same structure as in the earlier quotation, the pyra- 
midal tracts. He does not appear to see the application of 
the two opposite principles which I have mentioned, how- 
ever ; for he does not make it clear that in one case, the 
latter, he is dealing with the question of the origin of the 
pyramidal tracts by new adaptations, and in the other, 
with the fixing by habit of these tracts for purposes of 
voluntary movement. He says: 2 "When we pass in 
review a series of brains from the lower to the higher, and 
see how the pyramidal system is, so to speak, grafted onto 
the rest of the brain, when we observe how the increas- 
ing differentiation of the motor cortex runs parallel to the 
increasing possession of skilled, educated movements, we 
may perhaps suppose that ' a short-cut ' from the cortex to 

1 1 have, in reference to this formulation, the opinion of Prof. H. F. Osborn, 
that ' this is probably supported by the comparative anatomy of the cortex.' 
2 Loc. cit.y p. 1063. 



24 Infant and Race Psychology. 

the origins of the several motor nerves, such as is afforded 
by the pyramidal fibres, from the advantages it offers to 
the more primitive path from segment to segment along 
the cerebro-spinal axis, has by natural selection been de- 
veloped into being in man the chief and most important 
instrument for carrying out voluntary movements." 

This influence of Accommodation means, therefore, in 
this particular case, that animals may have nervous appa- 
ratus strikingly similar to that of man in many of its parts 
and still not be able to perform the functions which are 
performed by those parts in man. And the reason of it is, 
again, that man has got a certain apparatus set aside for a 
higher function without first using it for the lower func- 
tion for which the animal used it. In this again, we must 
recognize a violation of the principle of Recapitulation. 

The degree to which a simple structural device may 
preserve its type of action while adapting itself to new 
conditions, and assuming functions which, as far as their 
value, end, and conscious character are concerned, are new 
— this is simply extraordinary. And all the more so 
when we go to consciousness for the criterion of differ- 
ence in function. I shall illustrate this further in what 
I call the principle of ' lapsed links ' in the discussion of 
imitation below, and also in connection with the theory of 
the genesis of emotional expression. 1 The self-repeating 
or circular type of reaction, to which the name imitation is 
given in the later pages, is seen to be fundamental and to 
remain the same, as far as structure is concerned, for all 
motor activity whatever: the only difference between 
higher and lower function being, that in the higher, cer- 
tain accumulated adaptations have in time so come to 

1 Chap. X., § 2 for the first reference and Chap. VIII., § 4 for the second. 



Variations in Ontogeny. 25 

overlie the original reaction, that the conscious state which 
accompanies it seems to differ per se from the crude imita- 
tive consciousness in which it had its beginning. 

These positions, it is clear, suggest modifications of that 
doctrine of ontogenesis which holds that it closely epito- 
mizes phylogenesis. It is evident that while the organism 
develops serially in regular stages, yet often the stages in 
the individual's growth represent directly later stages in 
the series of animal structures, without having passed 
through all the earlier stages. To use the same example, 
which is apropos to our later topics, we could not hold 
that the infant first gets voluntary movement by using the 
intra-segmental pathways, and then later, by developing 
the pyramidal tracts and their connections, transfers its 
voluntary function to these. Yet this latter has been, prob- 
ably, the course of phylogenesis. On the contrary, we find 
that the infant does not act voluntarily at all until he acts 
via the pyramidal tracts and their central connections. 
The stage of intra-segmental voluntary action which, if it 
exists, represents phylogenetically a necessary stage of de- 
velopment, is lacking altogether in the ontogenetic series. 1 

Similarly, we find a remarkable illustration on the side 
of Accommodation. On the strict interpretation of the 
doctrine of Recapitulation we should find the child first 
passing through a stage of very varied and admirable in- 
stinctive adjustments, — corresponding to the instinctive 
equipment of the brutes, — and then later losing these 
instincts when it learns to act voluntarily. But the child 
shows nothing of the kind. We find instead that he passes 
directly from the suggestive, sensori-motor, stage, which is 

1 Cf. Edinger's account of the foetal and early development of the pyramidal 
tracts in his Structure of the Central Nervous System. 



26 Infant and Race Psychology. 

much lower and earlier in the phylogenetic series than the 
extreme instinctive stage, directly to the volitional stage. 
He accomplishes this by direct inheritance of the highly 
differentiated organism which has arisen through the exer- 
cise of conscious mental selection with heredity or through 
natural selection, and so omits, in his individual develop- 
ment, a great mass of phylogenetic details. 

The probability of such a modification of the doctrine 
of ontogenesis occurs to us also in a later connection as 
a corollary from the psychological theory of Habit. 1 The 
question is raised whether the effects of habit, itself a 
phenomenon of development, would not be inherited, or 
selected, thus abbreviating the ontogenetic process. A 
child, for example, by inheriting a direct tendency to re- 
spond to a visual stimulus with movements of the tongue 
and larynx, would be saved the long course of development 
which has been necessary phylogenetically for the estab- 
lishing of the direct connection, now very generally held 
to exist, between the visual and motor-speech centres, with 
a corresponding saving on the mental side. A striking 
illustration is seen, also, in the infant's behaviour in regard 
to space. A strict reproduction of the phylogenetic order 
would require that the child should first see the spacial 
dimensions with all the exactitude of the young of the 
lower mammals, and then afterwards develop the appara- 
tus for learning space properties by a very gradual expe- 
rience, at the same time losing the former apparatus and 
with it his instinctive knowledge of space. 2 

i Below, Chap. XVI., §§ 2, 3. 

2 It will have been noticed that in using the phrase ' heredity, or natural 
selection,' I offer either of the current biological views of heredity. I do 
not think the current controversy over ' acquired characters ' is pertinent to 
this topic: for Weismann's supplementary hypotheses in support of neo- 



Variations in Ontogeny. 27 

These considerations also seem, from the psychological 
side, to support the general theory of 'race experience ' 
as held by the evolutionists of both schools. The whole 
tendency of current psychology is toward a functional 
view of experience, i.e., toward the view that memory is 
a form of mental reinstatement or habit, that character is 
disposition for action, that the brain develops by enlarge- 
ment of function on the basis of earlier function, and that 
the mind proceeds upon its past, even when it does not 
know its indebtedness. The value of ancestral experience 
is seen in what it makes me to be for opinion and action 
now — by whatever process it may have come down from 
my father to myself. 

Now this is what evolution claims for race-experience. 
It says what is present in the mind now, in the way of 
function, is due somehow to the past. Nervous inherit- 
ance provides for the apparatus, and mental inheritance 
sums up the experience. Hence if individual mental de- 
velopment does not epitomize race development and yet 
it be true that man has developed, then the ' race experi- 
ence hypothesis' becomes absolutely essential to genetic 
psychology, just as animal physiology would be the main 
resource of human morphology, if the animal embryos did 
not show Recapitulation. 1 

Darwinism are so evidently framed to reinstate all the explanations of the 
doctrine of use with heredity, that it makes little difference which side is right. 
If the effects of experience are preserved sufficiently to secure development, as 
we find it, it becomes an extremely interesting biological problem to be sure, 
but not a matter of much philosophical importance, which does it, the * Sar- 
colemma ' or the ' Germ-plasm ' ; nor whether the method is use with heredity 
or variation with selection. See further discussion of the bearing of the two 
views upon the theory of organic development below, Chap. VII., § 3. 

1 An interesting line of inquiry has recently been opened up into what is 
known as ' Neuroses of Development ' (cf. Clouston's book with that title), i.e. y 



28 Infant and Race Psychology. 

The probabilities point, therefore, from the side of the 
phylogenesis of mind to the very marked modifications of 
the race record in the growth of the individual. They 
may finally have to be stated even more strongly than the 
purely nervous ones are stated, e.g., by Balfour, who says : 
"The time and sequence of the development of parts is 
often modified, and finally secondary structural features 
make their appearance to fit the embryo or larva for spe- 
cial conditions of existence. . . . Like the scholar with 
his manuscript, the embryologist has by a process of care- 
ful and critical examination to determine where the gaps 
are present, to detect the later insertions, and to place in 
order what has been misplaced"; 1 and by Marshall: "It 
is indeed a history, but a history of which entire chapters 
are lost, while in those that remain many pages are mis- 
placed and others are so blurred as to be illegible . . . 
and worse still, alterations or spurious additions have 
been freely introduced by later hands, and at times so 
cunningly as to defy detection." 

II. The second great consideration pertains to the 
period of infancy, using the term 'infancy' to cover the 
entire period of an organism's life from germination to 
independent existence with power to support life alone. 

The bearing of the length of the extra-uterine period 
of infancy — the usual meaning of the term — upon the 
development of the creature has been shown by Fiske 
and others to be highly important. Children are, during 
their long infancy, given parental care and artificial protec- 
tee nervous conditions which arise from the fact of development itself. These 
states arise at the crises, bridges, ' short-cuts,' in the individual's development ; 
such as the preliminaries of puberty, which probably represent a great series 
of phylogenetic changes. 

1 Comparative Embryology, p. 3. 



Variations in Ontogeny. 29 

tion, and so enabled to develop slowly to maturity, with all 
the practice in the acquisition of movements and in general 
adaptation to artificial conditions of living, etc., which the 
human intellectual and social environment of the adult 
demands. A long infancy period is accordingly necessary 
to his being a man ; the child must have time, nourishment 
and protection during the time, and finally instruction. 

Biologists are now recognizing a corresponding group 
of modifying circumstances brought to bear also during the 
prenatal period, which is simply an earlier stage of infancy. 
The course of development of the embryo is dependent 
upon the presence and amount of food, called 'food-yolk,' 
which the egg supplies. A principle has been formulated 
which connects the ontogenetic stages of growth directly 
with the food-yolk supply, i.e., a plentiful supply of food- 
yolk tends to a direct development toward maturity, to 
the abbreviation, consequently, of the recapitulation proc- 
ess, and to the birth of the creature ready formed for 
separate and independent existence. 1 

In this matter of the interpretation of the whole infancy 
period, including both prenatal and postnatal infancy, how- 
ever, there seem to be two influences at work which tend 
to opposite results. We have seen that abundant food 
supply in the conditions of embryonic or prenatal life 
tends to swift development and developmental abbrevi- 
ation. The new-born animal is soon fitted, under these 
conditions, for independent life on a comparatively high 
level of competition. This shortness of the embryonic 
period seems to be in direct relation to the shortness or 
entire absence of a postnatal infancy period. Being thus 

1 See Marshall's discussion of the influence of the food-yolk supply, Bio- 
logical Lectures, XIII. 



30 Infant and Race Psychology, 

fitted to take care of himself by advanced uterine develop- 
ment, he does not need after birth the artificial care, pro- 
tection, etc., of all infants. 

On the other hand, where we find a long postnatal in- 
fancy period, as in the case of the child, we find also a 
long antecedent embryo period, in spite of the abundant 
food-supply afforded by the placental method of uterine 
nourishment. 

The difference in the two cases seems to find some 
explanation when we look at the nature of the mental 
endowment secured in each case respectively. In the 
former case — that of swift intra-uterine preparation for 
immediate, independent life — the goal is refined and 
varied instinct, a matter of organic habit secured by ear- 
lier phylogenetic development : so the pathway of progress 
is already well trodden and the young organism has a 
straight road to grow along, marked out by its hereditary 
impulse. So the stretch to maturity is made rapidly. 

In the case, however, of long infancy, both before and 
after birth, the mental gifts to be secured are of a kind not 
already crystallized in instinct. The hereditary impulses 
require a long ontogenetic evolution in each individual. So 
in spite of all the favourable conditions of abundant food, 
freedom from disturbing influences, etc., the creature must 
have both one and the other period at its longest. 

The psychological considerations — which I am careful 
to keep to, not making any claim to biological expertness 
— would seem to favour some such formulation as the 
following, i.e., extra-uterine infancy period is to the intra- 
uterine embryonic period, the conditions being equally 
favourable, directly as the amount of ontogenetic develop- 
ment is to the amount of phylogenetic development in the 



Variations in Ontogeny. 31 

entire development of the creature's hereditary impulse. 
For although with creatures of instinct, which represent 
much phylogeny, the sum of the two periods is short, still 
the prenatal infancy period is relatively long, while with 
creatures of intelligence, which represent much ontogeny, 
although their whole period is long, yet the prenatal 
infancy period is relatively short. 

Furthermore, a great class of mechanical influences, 
such as external strain and stress, accidents, sudden 
changes in environment, cause modifications of the physi- 
ological conditions, and so also modifications of the stages 
of growth during the whole infancy period. Biologists 
recognize the need of restricting their expectations of 
recapitulation to circumstances in which the physiologi- 
cal conditions have been normal. 

The great cause, however, of departures from the series 
demanded by the theory of recapitulation in a given case 
is that which is known in general biology technically as 
'fortuitous' or 'spontaneous variation.' The law upon 
the basis of which natural selection gets application in the 
preservation of adult organisms — the law of supply, by 
which a great variety of forms is secured to select from — 
this law applies none the less to immature organisms. 
Not only do the fittest adults survive, but also the fittest 
embryos develop. And it is only a further application of 
the same truth — an application recently put in evidence 
by Weismann {Romanes Lecture, Oxford, 1894), under the 
term ' Intra-Selection ' — that single organs of one and 
the same creature are subject to such selection. 1 It is 

1 1 aim to show in my theory of motor adaptation developed below 
(Chap. VII.), that the same principle of variation with natural selection applies 
also to the single acts by which new functions are started and new adapta- 
tions secured, — what I call ' Organic Selection.' 



32 Infant and Race Psychology, 

easy then to see that the actual course of development of 
an organism along the line of stages marked out by the 
earlier race development might be disturbed at any point 
by the operation of natural selection. For under new 
conditions an embryo which departs in some way from the 
series demanded by recapitulation may by that very fact 
be fitted to survive, and so be seized upon by natural 
selection. 1 Sedgwick maintains also that variations found 
in adult forms are also reflected in the embryo. He says 
in the paper referred to in the last note (p. 41) : " Varia- 
tions do not merely affect the non-early period of life where 
they are of immediate functional importance to the animal, 
but, on the contrary, they are inherent in the germ and 
affect more or less profoundly the whole of development." 
Coming back to mental development, we should expect 
to find a similar state of things : the recapitulation of 
mental stages in the history of the child should show 
similar breaks. Abundant 'food supply' in the shape of 
lessons, rich suggestions in its social and educational life, 
urging forward in tasks of mind, etc., should give preco- 
cious mental development in the sense of early maturity of 
mind. The stages normally prescribed for natural growth 
may thus be abbreviated. The same effect is produced 

1 This influence of ' variation ' does not seem to have had sufficient empha- 
sis by embryologists ; but see the illustrations of it given by Marshall, who, 
nevertheless, rather leaves it to be assumed than definitely states it. The re- 
cent paper by Sedgwick, Quarterly yournal of Microscopic Science (April, 
1894), endeavours, however, to reconstruct the theory of recapitulation in 
view of the facts of variation. He finds that only those stages of an- 
cestral form are preserved in embryos which represent conditions of larval 
existence in the ancestral line, the point being that the independent life of 
larvae have required the full development of organs for actual functions and so 
secured their preservation in the later series of embryonic changes, the 
change from larval to embryonic development being due to variation. 



Variations in Ontogeny. 33 

also by accidents of environment. Newsboys and street 
gamins become sharp and mentally agile to a phenome- 
nal degree from their method of life, while boys reared in 
the artificial seclusion and solitude of the single son, edu- 
cated by a tutor in his father's house, show the contrary 
character. 

The fact of variation, however, should here, as on the 
biological side, have supreme emphasis. No two children 
are alike. This is a commonplace ; but its true meaning 
is not a commonplace. Its meaning is not limited to the 
fact that the child, A, has a different temperament, differ- 
ent tastes, different memory type, etc., from the child, B. 
It means further that this difference is the only means to 
human progress, — the only supply of material for the 
selection of the fittest under the action of a progressive 
social environment. 

I do not care to enlarge here upon the extraordinary 
pedagogical aspects of this theme : they await attention 
later on. 1 I note it here as a fact important in the theory 
of mental development. If it be a fact, then all infant 
observations must be read in the light of it. No child's 
deeds should be given universal value without a critical 
examination, before which even the most competent psy- 
chologist might well quail. For how do we know that 
this child has not had artificial rearing so far in its life, 
how know that he has not experienced accidents of environ- 
ment which produce those ' developmental conveniences ' 
of mental behaviour which psychologists may recognize as 
artificial short-cuts from one stage of growth to another; 
how know that he does but show anachronisms of develop- 
ment forced upon him by malformation of brain, body, or 

1 In my proposed volume. 



34 Infant and Race Psychology, 

limb ? Or is he not himself in some important respect — 
as to filial instinct, premature sexuality, unusually strong 
or early thrill of nervous emotion, etc. — a variation, for 
life or for speedy death ? We do not know. 

If the morphologist, whose specimens are laid out on 
glass and bottled in jars, is confused by the perpetual 
anomalies of recapitulation, which make it necessary for 
him to arm himself with all the cautions formulated by 
Balfour, Marshall, Adam Sedgwick, 1 and others; then 
where is the morphologist of mind, whose specimens are 
hidden behind all the screens of social convention, mater- 
nal pride and tenderness, and all the hideous realities of 
ignorant nursery customs? All he can get is an occa- 
sional snap-shot at a baby. And, alas, this is more than 
most psychologists seem to want ! 

I am obliged, therefore, to modify even further the 
principle which seemed safe in our earlier paragraph, i.e., 
that the order of an infant's stages of development might 
be considered constant. It is only true if we know that 
the 'stage' is really an universal and regular stage. To be 
such it must lie between two other 'stages' just as universal 
and regular. With this caution we may use the rule with 
two very different degrees of value, according as we are 
dealing with the ontogeny of man or with his phylogeny, 
— with what a human mind goes through from cradle to 
grave on one hand, and with what, on the other hand, we 
may take from this development, as representing the race 
history of man, either the history of the species or the 
wider reach of animal race history. 

For it is clear that the stages of human ontogeny may 
be built up from a wide series of observations of different 

1 In Quarterly Journal of Microscopic Science, April, 1894. 



Variations in Ontogeny. 35 

children under varied conditions. So the embryologists 
establish the ontogeny of a species with great exactness 
and nicety of observation. In this way the widest reports 
of single observers of children get their value — a value 
for science, and especially for education. 

But such a science as comparative mental morphology 
— and even worse, that of mental embryology — is at 
present a chimera. How can we say anything about 
recapitulation when we know so little about mental 
ontogeny and less, perhaps, about comparative mental 
physiology ? In popular phrase, that is : how can we 
compare the development of the infant with that of the 
animal series, when we know neither how the child de- 
velops nor what is actually taking place in his conscious- 
ness, in any great detail, at any stage to which he may 
have developed ? 



CHAPTER II. 

A New Method of Child Study. 

§ I. Critical. 

The current discussions of the more elementary mental 
processes show that we lack clearness in our conceptions 
of the earlier stages of mental life. This is evident 
enough to call out frequent appeals for 'scientific' child 
study. The word 'scientific' is all right, as far as it 
goes ; but as soon as we come to ask what constitutes 
scientific child study, and why it is that we have so little 
of it, we find no clear answer; and we go on as before, 
accepting the same anecdotes of fond mothers and repeat- 
ing the observations of Egger and Max Miiller. 

Now there are only two ways of studying a child, as of 
studying any other object — observation and experiment. 
But who can observe, and who can experiment ? Who 
can look through a telescope and ' observe ' a new 
satellite ? Only a skilful astronomer. Who can hear a 
patient's hesitating speech and 'observe' aphasia? Only 
a neurologist. Observation means the acutest exercise 
of the discriminating faculty of the scientific specialist. 
And yet many of the observations which we have in this 
field were made by the average mother, who knows less 
about the human body than she does about the moon or 
a wild flower, or by the average father, who sees his child 

36 



Critical. 37 

for an hour a day, when the boy is dressed up, and who 
has never slept in the same room with him in his life ; 
by people who have never heard the distinction between 
reflex and voluntary action, or that between nervous adap- 
tation and conscious selection. Only the psychologist can 
' observe ' the child, and he must be so saturated with 
his information and his theories that the conduct of the 
child becomes instinct with meaning for his theories of 
mind and body. 

It is evident, however, that all faithful recording is of 
importance, and that this may be done by all those who 
can be thoroughly objective and unprejudiced in the pres- 
ence of children. I believe that many parents can do 
this with very great accuracy ; but there remains still the 
uncertainty, when such records are taken up for interpre- 
tation, as to whether the parent or nurse, in a particular 
case, has been free from the influences of affection, pride, 
jealousy, etc. On the whole, judging from the records 
in this branch of psychology, the science would better 
wait till its competent workers realize their opportunities 
and seriously study the children for themselves. 

And as for 'experiment,' greater still is the need. 
Many a thing a child is said to do, a little judicious 
experimenting — a little arrangement of the essential 
requirements of the act in question — shows it is alto- 
gether incapable of doing. But to do this we must have 
our theories, and have our critical moulds arranged be- 
forehand. That most vicious and Philistine attempt in 
some quarters to put science in the strait-jacket of bar- 
ren observation, to draw the life-blood of all science — 
speculative advance into the secrets of things — this ultra- 
positivistic cry has come here as everywhere else, and put 



38 A New Method of Child Study. 

a. ban upon theory. On the contrary, give us theories, 
theories, always theories ! Let every man who has a 
theory pronounce his theory ! This is just the difference 
between the average mother and the good psychologist 
— she has no theories, he has ; he has no interests, she 
has. She may bring up a family of a dozen and not be 
able to make a single trustworthy observation ; he may 
be able, from one sound of one yearling, to confirm 
theories of the neurologist and educator, which are mo- 
mentous for the future training and welfare of the child. 

In the matter of experimenting with children, therefore, 
our theories must guide our work — guide it into channels 
which are safe for the growth of the child, stimulating 
to his powers, definite and enlightening in the outcome. 
All this has been largely lacking, I think, so far, both 
in scientific psychology and in applied pedagogy. The 
implications of physiological and mental is so close in 
infancy, the mere animal can do so much to ape reason, 
and the rational is so helpless under the leading of in- 
stinct, impulse, and external necessity, that the task is 
excessively difficult — to say nothing of the extreme deli- 
cacy and tenderness of the budding tendrils of the mind. 
Experiment ? Every time we send a child out of the 
home to the school, we subject him to experiment of the 
most serious and alarming kind. He goes into the hands 
of a teacher who is not only not wise unto the child's 
salvation, but who is on the contrary a machine for 
administering a single experiment, to an infinite variety 
of children. It is perfectly certain that two in every 
three children are irretrievably damaged or hindered in 
their mental and moral development in the school ; but 
I am not at all sure that they would fare any better if 



Critical. 39 

they stayed at home ! The children are experimented 
with so much and so unwisely, in any case, that it is 
possible that a little intentional experiment, guided by 
real insight and psychological information, would do them 
good. 

With this preamble, I wish to call attention to a possible 
method of experimenting with young children, which has 
not been before noted to my knowledge. 1 In endeavouring 
to bring questions like the degree of memory, recognition, 
association, etc., present in an infant, to a practical test, 
considerable embarrassment has always been experienced 
in construing the child's responses safely. Of course the 
only way a child's mind can be studied is through its 
expression — facial, lingual, vocal, muscular ; and the first 
question, i.e., What did the infant do ? must be followed 
by a second, i.e., What did his doing that mean ? And 
the second question is, as I have said, the harder question, 
and the one which requires more knowledge and insight. 
It is evident, on the surface, that the farther away we get 
in the child's life from simple inherited or reflex responses, 
the more complicated do the responsive processes become, 
and the greater becomes the difficulty of analyzing them, 
and arriving at a true picture of the real mental condition 
which lies back of them. 

To illustrate this confusion, I may cite about the one 
problem which psychologists have attempted to solve by 
experiments on children : the determination of the order 
of rise of the child's perceptions of the different quali- 
ties of colour. Preyer starts the series of experiments by 
showing a child various colours and requiring the child 

1 My first discussion of it was in Science, New York, April 21 v 1893. 



40 A New Method of Child Study. 

to name them, the results being expressed in percentages 
of true answers to the whole number. Now this experi- 
ment involves no less than four different questions, and 
the results give absolutely no clue to their analysis. It 
involves, i. The child's distinguishing different colours 
simultaneously displayed before it, i.e.> the complete de- 
velopment of the child's colour sensation apparatus; 2. The 
child's ability to recognize or identify a colour after having 
seen it once ; 3. An association between the child's colour- 
seeing and word-hearing and speaking memories, by which 
the name is brought up ; 4. Equally ready facility in the 
pronunciation of the various colour names which the 
child recognizes : and there is the further embarrassment, 
that any such process which involves association, is as 
varied as the lives of children. The single fact that 
speech is acquired long after objects and some colours are 
distinguished, shows that Preyer's results are worthless as 
far as the problem of colour perception is concerned. 

That the fourth element pointed out above is a real source 
of confusion is shown by the fact that children recognize 
many words which they cannot pronounce readily. Binet, 
who represents the second phase in the development of 
this experimental problem, realized this, and varied the 
conditions by naming a colour and then requiring the 
child to pick out the corresponding colour. This gave 
results different not only from Preyer's, but also from 
those which Binet reached by Preyer's method. For 
example, Preyer's child identified yellow better than any 
other colour, a result which no one has confirmed. 

The further objection that colours might be distin- 
guished before the word-association is established at all, 
or that colour-words might be interchanged or confused by 



Critical. 41 

the child, 1 is also seen by Binet, and his attempt to elimi- 
nate that source of error constitutes what we may call the 
third stage in the statement of the problem. He adopts 
the methode de reconnaissance as preferable to the me'thode 
d? appellation. This consisted, in his experiments, in show- 
ing to a child a coloured counter, and then asking the 
child to pick out the same colour from a number of differ- 
ent coloured counters. 

This reduces the question to the second of the four I 
have named above. It is the usual method of testing for 
colour-blindness. It answers very well for colour-blind- 
ness ; for what we really want to learn in the case of a 
sailor or a signal-man is whether he can recognize a deter- 
mined colour when it is repeated ; that is, does he know 
green or red to be the same as his former experience of 
green or red ? But it is evident that there is still a more 
fundamental question in the matter — the real question of 
colour perception. It is quite possible a child might not 
recognize an isolated colour quality when he could really 
very well distinguish colour qualities side by side. It is 
the question just now coming to the front, the question of 
absolute vs. relative recognition, or immediate vs. mediate 
recognition. 2 The last question is this : When does the 
child get the different colour sensations (not recognitions), 
and in what order ? 

A further point of criticism of Binet's results serves to 
illustrate my argument. Binet rules out the influence of 
the word memories which were necessary to Preyer's 

1 A good instance of such confusion, between red and blue, and its correct 
interpretation, is given by Miss Shinn, Notes on the Development of a Child, 
Part I., pp. 38 and 50. 

2 See the discussion of the question of tone recognitions, below, Chap. 
XIV., § 3. 



42 A New Method of Child Study. 

results, by his metkode de reconnaissance. The child recog- 
nizes again the colour just seen. Now those who have fol- 
lowed the course of recent discussions of recognition will 
remember that the mediation of word-associations is not 
ruled out in these cases in children of three to five years old 
or even younger. Lehmann finds coloured wools are recog- 
nized when the colours are those whose names are known 
{Benennungsassociation), and that shades which have not 
peculiar names, or whose names are not known, are not 
recognized. Others have held that an unobserved or 
unintelligible element — a Nebenvorstellung — may serve 
as the link of recognition without rising again to clear 
consciousness a second time. It is, of course, useless, if 
these results be trustworthy, to attempt to get recognitions 
clear of word memories after colour names have once been 
learned by the child. It would seem that the question 
ought to be taken up with younger children. Binet's 
experiments were in the interval between the child's 
thirty-second and fortieth months. It is perhaps a con- 
firmation of Lehmann's position, that the colours least 
recognized in Binet's list are shades whose names are less 
familiar to children ; his list, in order of certainty of rec- 
ognition, is red, blue, green, rose, maroon, violet, and 
yellow, by the methode d appellation ; and, by both methods 
together, red, blue, orange, maroon, rose, violet, green, 
white, and yellow. 1 

§ 2. Expository. 

This colour question may suffice to make clear the essen- 
tials of a true experimental method. Only when we catch 

1 Calculated from Binet's detailed results {Revue Philosophique, 1890, II., 
582 ff.) by Mr. F. Tracy; see his book, The Psychology of Childhood, p. 14, 
and cf. the results of my own experiments below, Chap. IV., § I . 



Expository. 43 

the motor response, or a direct reflex, in its simplicity, is 
it a true index of the sensory stimulus in its simplicity. 
I have accordingly attempted to reach a method of child 
study of such a character as to yield a series of experi- 
ments whose results would be in terms of the most funda- 
mental motor reactions of the infant, which could be easily 
and pleasantly conducted, and which would be of wide 
application. The child's hand movements are, I think, 
the most nearly ideal in this respect. The hand reflects 
the first stimulations, the most stimulations, and, becom- 
ing the most mobile and executive organ of volition, attains 
the most varied and interesting offices of utility. We 
have spontaneous arm and hand movements, reflex move- 
ments, reaching-out movements, grasping movements, 
imitative movements, manipulating movements, and vol- 
untary efforts — all these, in order, reflecting the devel- 
opment of the mind. The organs of speech are only later 
brought into use, and their use for speech involves an 
already high development of mind, hence the error in 
Preyer's results. It has accordingly seemed to me worth 
while to find whether a child's reaching movements would 
reflect with any degree of regularity the modifications of 
its sensibility, and, if so, how far this could be made a 
method of experimenting with young children. 1 

I may adduce one or two considerations which tend to 
show that some such dynamogenic method is theoretically 
valid. There are some results already recognized in the 
psychology of sense and movement which lend confirma- 

1 The suggestion of Mrs. Ladd Franklin ( The Psychological Review, L, 1894, 
p. 202) is quite in accord with this requirement, i.e., that Sach's discovery 
of reflex changes in the width of the pupil when certain colours are looked at 
might be used to test the colour sensations of very young children. 



44 A New Method of Child Study. 

tion to this idea. The facts that the most motile organs 
have acutest sensibility, notably the hand and fingers ; 
that certain marked types of action, such as imitation, arise 
first in connection with the hand; that the central organic 
preparation for volition is secured first in the arrangements 
for hand movements : 1 all these facts indicate that the 
hand movements are the best index of general and special 
sensibility in the infant. Fere maintains that sensory 
stimulations of all kinds increase the maximum hand pres- 
sure. Colours seen have regular, and each its peculiar, 
effect upon movement. Tones have similar influence. The 
ticking of a watch is more clearly perceived if movements 
are made at the same time. Further, the reaction-time of 
hand movements is shorter if the stimulus (sound, etc.) 
be more intense. There is an enlargement of the hand, 
through increased blood pressure, when a loud sound is 
heard. The fact of muscle-reading, and its experimental 
demonstration by Jastrow, together with the whole series 
of facts shown by recent experiments in so-called 'uncon- 
scious movements' by diseased patients 2 — these, and a 
variety of other facts upon which the law of ' dynamogene- 
sis' rests, seem to afford justification for the view that the 
infant's hand movements in reaching and grasping are the 
best index of the kind and intensity of its sensory ex- 
periences. Magendie 3 long ago suggested measuring 
changes in sensibility by the corresponding changes in 
blood pressure. 

Further, it is not necessary to embarrass ourselves with 
the question whether the hand movements are voluntary 

1 Soltmann; cf. the chapter below on the 'Origin of Volition,' especially 
pp. 421, 424. 

2 Binet, Janet. 



Expository, 45 

or not. However we may differ as to the circumstances 
of the rise of volition, it is still true that after its rise the 
child's reactions are for a long time quite under the lead 
of its sensory life. It lives so fully in the immediate 
present and so closely in touch with its environment, that 
the influences which lead to movement can be detected 
with great regularity. In this case the sensations which 
are stimuli to movement become what we may also call 
'effort stimuli,' and the child's efforts with his hands 
become indications of the relative degree of discrimination, 
attractiveness, etc., of the different sensations which call 
the efforts out. 

Suppose we hang up a piece of meat over Carlo's head 
and tell him to jump for it. His first jump falls short of 
the meat. He jumps again and clears a greater distance. 
Why does he jump farther the second time ? Not because 
he argues that a harder jump is necessary to secure the 
meat; but because by the first jump he got more smell, 
blood colour, and appetite stimulus from the meat. Now 
suppose it to be a red rag instead of meat, and Carlo 
refuse to jump a second time. This is not because he 
concludes the rag would choke him, but because he gets a 
kind of sensation which takes away what appetite stimulus 
he already had. The thing is a thing of sensational 
dynamogeny or ' suggestion,' and the child's state of mind 
up to his twenty -fourth month, more or less, is just about 
the same. 

The following questions, I think, might be taken up by 
some such method as this : — 

1. The presence of different colour sensations as 
shown by the number and persistence of the child's 
efforts to grasp the colour. 



46 A New Method of Child Study. 

2. The relative attractiveness of different colours meas- 
ured in the same way. 

3. The relative attractiveness of different colour combi- 
nations. 

4. The relative exactness of distance estimation as 
shown by the child's efforts to reach over distances for 
objects. 

5. The relative attractiveness of different visual out- 
lines (stars, circles, etc.) cut in the same attractive colour, 
etc. 

6. The relative use of right, left, and both hands. 

7. The rise of imitative movements. 

8. The rise of voluntary movements. 

9. The presence and character of ' accompanying move- 
ments ' at different stages of motor development. 

10. The strength of desire and voluntary inhibition as 
shown in the relative persistence of movements of grasping. 

11. The relative strength of disparate sensations at dif- 
ferent periods of child life, as shown by their comparative 
expression in movement. 

12. The inhibiting influence of elementary associations, 
especially pains, punishments, etc. 

I am quite aware of the meagreness of this list ; but one 
has only to remember the fact that there is no such thing 
yet as a psycho-physics of the active life, that this side of 
psychology is almost terra incognita to the experimental- 
ist. 1 If the method prove reliable in one-half of these 

I I see no reason that a method could not be devised for testing the motive 
influences of presentations of a neutral associational character in terms of the 
time elapsed since their experience. I have announced elsewhere {Proceed- 
ings of Congress for Exper. Psychology, London, 1892) the first results of a 
research conducted upon adults by such a method and hope soon to publish 
further details and inferences. Professor Munsterberg has recently suggested 



Formula of the Dynamogenic Method. 47 

questions, then so much gain. I have applied it to some 
of them in a more or less incomplete way, in the case of 
my two children, H. and E., both girls, with the results 
recorded in subsequent pages of this book. In each case 
below I take occasion to say to what extent the results are 
of real, or only of methodological, value. 

§ 3. Formula of the Dynamogenic Method. 

When this method is reduced to its lowest terms, as ap- 
plied to children old enough to reach out for objects which 
they see, two variable quantities are always involved. The 
reactions will vary in some way with the distance of the 
object exposed, and also in some way with the kind of 
stimulus. For example, a child of perhaps eight months 
of age reaches after an orange, when it is eleven inches in 
front of him, with great regularity ; but very irregularly, 
or possibly not at all, when it is fourteen inches away. 
Again, he reaches for a colour, red, when perhaps he would 
not for a colourless object. 

If we take the simplest cases — cases in which observa- 
tion shows the responses of the child to be regular, the con- 
ditions of quiet, comfortable position, interest, etc., being 
throughout normal and undisturbed — we may consider 
these two things, quality and distance, as the only important 
variables. By quality is meant the so-called sensational 
character of the stimulating object. If, then, we further 
inquire into the drawing-out influence of various stimula- 
tions, it is evident that it will vary with the quality (q) y 
and, in some inverse ratio, with the distance (d). In other 

a method of studying the influence of stimulations upon eye-movements, atten- 
tion, etc., which is also dynamogenic and proceeds upon somewhat the same 
presuppositions {The Psychological Review, I., pp. 441 ff., September, 1894). 



48 A New Method of Child Study. 

words, naming the calling-out or dynamogenic influence of 
a stimulus, D, we have the equation, 

in which k is the sign of proportion. 

I state this formula not to be mathematical, but simply, 
by ringing the changes possible through substitution of 
values, to illustrate the applications of the method and the 
limits of the general principle of reaction. If q be kept 
constant, experiments will determine the law by which the 
influence of d changes. Again, experiments at different 
ages would show the effect on d of experience in associating 
visual distance with muscular distance. Again, keeping d 
constant, experiments would show the value of various 
sense qualities, the q values. 

An interesting point emerges when we inquire the 
effect of zero and infinity values. If the child, for ex- 
ample, always reaches for an apple at nine inches, this 
would be practically the case of d=o. But, as a mat- 
ter of fact, distance then has no influence ; the whole 
possible variation in D in successive experiments with 
different q's is due to the q values themselves. It is 
asked at once why the influence of d is not equally ruled 
out in any series of experiments in which d is kept con- 
stant, say at twelve inches. The answer is : because in 
each such series the influence of d changes from the 
fact of practice, habit, and slight fatigue. If the child 
reaches for a blue-^ at twelve inches, and just gets it, he 
will then reach for a green-^ with greater avidity at 
twelve inches than he would otherwise have reached for 
the same green-^ at nine inches. So psychology inter- 



Formula of the Dynamogenic Method. 49 

feres with mathematics. So the value for d=6, at which 
we have the purest influence of q, is not the least distance 
possible, but the child's normal reaching distance. 

Again, if the child just refrains from reaching for a q at 
fourteen inches, this means practically that d = co ; that is, 
the influence of d is so all-important that it shuts out all 
relative ^-influences. The distance inhibits movement alto- 
gether. But just here another psychological factor inter- 
feres with the mathematics ; in some cases the inhibition 
of d does not work, and the child oversteps all its expe- 
rience in violent straining and tears. These two so-called 
psychological 'interferences' are referred to again later 
on, the latter being, I think, the main external channel 
of the rise of right- or left-handed ness. 1 

These qualifications make it evident that this form of 
mathematical statement shows only — what most appeals 
to mathematics in psychology are — an artificial show of 
exactness. This method, like all other psychological meth- 
ods, must be used with a thousand cautions and as many 
failures ; and the last condition of such experiments, as 
the first condition of all work with children, is sympathetic 
insight into their mental movements. Only such sym- 
pathy and insight can cope with the subtle responses 
which a wide-awake child makes to the most trifling vari- 
ations in our treatment of him. 

I shall now give further facts and experiments illustrat- 
ing the regularity of the child's reactions, and so put in 
evidence the general principle of ' dynamogenesis,' upon 
which all motor development, both in the child and in the 
race, must ultimately rest. 

1 See below, Chap. IV. 



CHAPTER III. 

Distance and Colour Perception by Infants. 

§ I. Experimental. 

The method called ' dynamogenic ' has been explained 
in earlier pages. The application of it to particular ques- 
tions now demands attention, as far as the present writer 
has attempted to apply it. 

It is evident, as was said before in speaking of the in- 
fant's responses in reaching for objects, that in any par- 
ticular case the element of distance is a variable quantity 
to be considered with the influence of the particular stim- 
ulus in question. In investigating the infant's colour sen- 
sations, therefore, we have the formula D=~ y in which c 

d 

denotes colour, d distance, and D strength of dynamogeny, 
as already explained. 

I undertook at the beginning of my child H.'s ninth 
month to experiment with her with a view to arriving at 
the exact state of her colour perception, employing this 
new method. The arrangements consisted in this instance 
in giving the infant a comfortable sitting posture, kept 
constant by a band passing around her chest and fastened 
securely to the back of her chair. Her arms were left 
bare and quite free in their movements. Pieces of paper 
of different colours were exposed before her, at varying 

50 



Experimental. 51 

distances, front, right, and left. This was regulated by a 
framework, consisting of a horizontal rod graded in inches, 
projecting from the back of the chair at a level with her 
shoulder and parallel with her arm when extended straight 
forward, and carrying on it another rod, also graded in 
inches, at right-angles to the first. This second rod was 
thus a horizontal line directly in front of the child, parallel 
with a line connecting her two shoulders, and so equally 
distant for both hands. This second rod was made to 
slide upon the first, so as to be adjusted at any desirable 
distance from the child. On this second rod the colours, 
etc., were placed in succession, the object being to excite 
the child to reach for the colour. 

So far from being distasteful to the infant, I found that, 
with pleasant suggestions thrown about the experiments, 
the whole procedure gave her the most intense gratifica- 
tion, and the affair became one of her pleasant daily occu- 
pations. After each sitting she was given a reward of 
some kind. 

The accompanying tables give the results, both for 
colour and distance, of 217 experiments. Of these 11 1 
were with five colours and 106 with ordinary newspaper 
(chosen as a relatively neutral object, which would have 
no colour value and no association, to the infant). In the 
tables R stands for ' refusal' to reach out for the object, 
A for * acceptance ' with effort, N for the entire number 
of experiments with each colour respectively, and n for 

the entire number with all the colours at each distance 

A 
respectively. So — = the proportion of acceptances or 

/? 

efforts for any colour, and — = the proportion of refusals 

for each distance. 



5 2 Distance and Colour Perception by Infants, 



TABLE I. 



Distance, 
Inches 


9 


IO 


II 


12 


13 


14 


15 


Totals. 


Ratio -• 

N 




R.A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R. A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


if. A. N. 




Blue 


O— I 


0-4 


o-5 


i-3 


2-4 


i-5 


3-i 


7-23-30 


.766 


Red 


O— I 


o-3 


2 — 2 


1-4 


i-7 


i-7 


5-i 


IO-25-35 


.714 


White 


o— o 


o— o 


O — O 


0— 1 


o-5 


1 — 1 


3-o 


4- 7- 11 


.633 


Green 


o— o 


O— I 


O— I 


2—1 


i-4 


1 — 2 


2—0 


6- 9-16 


.60 


Brown 


O— I 


O — 2 


2—1 


3-2 


o-3 


3-i 


2—0 


10—10—20 


•50 


Totals 


o-3 


O— IO 


4-9 


7-II 


4-23 


7-16 


15-2 


37-74-m 


.66 


■p 

Ratio — 
n 


o 


O 


•30 


•39 


•15 


.30 


.90 


Total .33 





TABLE II. 



Distance, 
Inches 


9 


IO 


II 


12 


13 


14 


J 5 


Totals. 


Ratio -• 

N 




R.A. 


R.A. 


if. A. 


if. A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


if. A. N. 




News- 
paper 

Colour 


0-3 


O— IO 


4-9 


O-17 
7-II 


O-28 
4-23 


i-33 
7-16 


25 — 2 
15-2 


26— 80—106 

37- 74-1" 


.76 
.66 


Totals 


0-3 


O— IO 


4-9 


7-28 


4-51 


8-49 


40-4 


63-154-217 


.71 


Ratio - 
n 


•30 


.20 


.07 


.14 


.91 


Total .29 





From these tables we might be able to conclude, if the 
experiments were of sufficient number and all proper 



Experimental. 5 3 

been taken — on which points the next paragraph may 
be read — to conclude important results for the perception 
of colour and distance. The following inferences, indeed, 
seem to be safely drawn. 

Colour. — The results are evident in the tables (I. and 
II.), especially the columns marked * Ratio—' and * Ratio 

— .' The colours range themselves in an order of attrac- 
n 

tiveness, i.e., blue, white, red, green, and brown. Disre- 
garding white, the difference between blue and red is very 
slight compared to that between any other two. This 
confirms Binet as against Preyer, who puts blue last, and 
also fails to confirm Preyer in putting brown before red 
and green. Brown to my child — as tested in this way — 
seemed to be about as neutral as could well be. A similar 
distaste for brown was noticed in the child observed by 
Miss Shinn. 1 White, on the other hand, was more attrac- 
tive than green and slightly more so than red. I am sorry 
that my list does not include yellow. The newspaper 
was, at reaching distance (9 to 10 inches) and a little 
more (up to 14 inches), as attractive as the average of the 
colours, and even as much so as the red ; but this is prob- 
ably due to the fact that the newspaper experiments came 
after a good deal of practice in reaching after colours, and 
a more exact association between the stimulus and its 
distance ; an influence which I have remarked upon in the 
general discussion, above, 2 of the formula for the method. 
At 15 inches and over, accordingly, the newspaper was 
refused in more than 92 per cent of the cases, while blue 
was refused at that distance in only 75 per cent, and red 
in 83 per cent. 

1 Loc. cit., p. 47. * Above, pp. 48 f. 



54 Distance and Colour Perception by Infants. 

Distance} — In regard to the question of distance, the 
child persistently refused to reach for anything put 16 
inches or more away from her. At 1 5 inches she refused 
91 per cent of all the cases, 90 per cent of the colour 
cases, and, as I have said, 92 per cent of the newspaper 
cases. At nearer distances we find the remarkable uni- 
formity with which the safe-distance association works at 
this early age. At 14 inches only 14 per cent of all the 
cases were refused, and at 13 inches only about 7 per 
cent. The fact that there was a larger percentage of 
refusals at 11 and 12 inches than at 13 and 14 inches, 
is seen from the table (I.) to be due to the influence of the 
brown, which was refused consistently when more than 
10 inches away. The fact that there were no refusals 
to reach for anything exposed within reaching distance 
(10 inches) — other attractive objects being kept away — 
shows two things : (1) the very fine estimation visually 
of the distance represented by the arm-length, thus em- 
phasizing the element of muscular sensations of arm- 
movement in the perception of distance generally ; and 
(2) the great uniformity at this age of the phenomenon 
of ' sensori-motor suggestion ' 2 upon which this method 
of child study is based. In respect to the first point, it 
will be remembered that the child does not begin to reach 
for anything that it sees until the fourth or sixth week ; 
so it is evident at what a remarkably fast rate this associa- 
tion between those obscure factors of size, perspective, 
light and shade, etc., which signify distance to the eye, 
becomes associated with arm-movements, in such a way 
that the inhibition of movement by sensations from the 
other sense is secured so early. 

1 See also the remarks in Chap. IV., § 2. 2 See below, Chap. VI., § 3. 



Critical. 55 

In regard to the relative use of the two hands in these 
and other experiments, — this is a topic to which I may 
devote the next brief chapter. 

§ 2. Critical. 

It is in place to recall the criticisms already offered 1 
upon the colour experiments of Preyer and Binet. I think 
the method thus applied successfully obviates all these 
difficulties of earlier methods. There are certain other 
requirements of proper procedure, however, which, as far 
as I am aware, have never been duly weighed by any one 
who has experimented with young children. 

In the first place, fatigue is a matter of considerable 
importance, not only on this method but on any other. 
Again, the child is peculiarly susceptible to the appeals of 
change, novelty, chance, or happy suggestion ; and often 
the failure to respond to a stimulus is due to distraction 
or to discomfort rather than to lack of intrinsic interesting 
quality. In respect to fatigue, I would say that the first 
signs of restlessness, or arbitrary loss of interest, in a 
series of stimulations, is sufficient warning, and all attempts 
at further experimenting should cease. Often the child 
is in a state of indisposition, of trifling nervous irritability, 
etc. ; this should be detected beforehand and then nothing 
should be undertaken. No series longer than three trials 
should be attempted without changing the child's position, 
resting its attention with a song, or a game, etc., and thus 
leading it fresh to its 'task' again. Further, no single 
stimulus, as a colour, should be twice repeated without a 
change to some other : since the child's eagerness or alert- 

1 Above, Chap. II., § I. 



56 Distance and Colour Perception of Infants. 

ness is somewhat satisfied by the first effort and a new 
thing is necessary to bring him out to full exercise again. 
Further, after each effort or two the child should be given 
the object reached for to hold or play with for a moment ; 
otherwise he grows to apprehend that the whole affair is 
a case of Tantalus. In all these matters, very much de- 
pends upon the knowledge and care of the experimenter, 
and his ability to keep the child in a normal condition of 
pleasurable muscular exercise throughout. 1 

Coming to colour experiments, several requirements 
would appear to be necessary for exact results. Should 
not the colours chosen be equal in purity, intensity, lustre, 
illumination, etc. ? In reference to these qualitative dif- 
ferences, — those which are really important in order to 
keep our symbol constant as respects all but the qualita- 
tive colour influence, — I think only that degree of care 
need be exercised which good comparative judgment pro- 
vides. Colours of about equal objective intensity, of no 
gloss, of relatively evident spectral purity, under constant 
illumination, — this is all that is required : for the variations 
due to the grosser influences I have mentioned, such as 
condition of attention, physical unrest, disturbing noises, 
sights, etc., are of greater influence than any of these more 
recondite objective variations in the stimulus. Intensity 
and lustre, however, are certainly important. It is possible, 
by carefully choosing a room of pretty constant daylight 
illumination, and setting the experiments at the same hour 
each day, to secure a regular degree of brightness if the 
colours themselves are equally bright : and lustre may be 

1 It is on account of my extreme care in these points that the number of 
experiments recorded in the tables in this chapter is so small : as it was, they 
extended over a period of more than six months. I was then obliged to sep- 
arate myself from the child, and so the series came to an end. 



Critical. 5 7 

ruled out by using coloured wools or blotting-papers. The 
papers used by myself were coloured blotting-papers, which 
I selected by their empirical properties as good for the 
purpose. The omission of yellow is due to the absence, in 
my neighbourhood, of a yellow paper that satisfied me. I 
did not care to introduce another element of uncertainty 
in the way of change of texture or general character as to 
shape, form, etc., as an altogether different object would 
have done. 

The only valid criticism, therefore, on the tables is that 
which exposes the small number of experiments ; and an 
examination of the table proves it well taken. It has been 
suggested to me by a friend 1 that the results at 11, 12, 13, 
and 14 inches might be taken together for each colour ; 
since the element of distance would not give important 
variations within these limits. This, it will be seen, how- 
ever, on calculation, does not alter the order of colour 
preference, except to lay more emphasis on white. 

On the whole, therefore, I attach some little importance 
to the experiments apart from their illustrative value and 
their possible stimulating effect upon others who may care 
to extend them. For these latter reasons, however, as 
much as for the positive inferences I have drawn from them 
above, I have felt that they ought not to be unrecorded. 
Their main purpose in the progress and plan of this book 
is seen in their witness to the regularity of operation of 
the principle of suggestion or dynamogenesis. 

1 Mrs. C. Ladd Franklin, who wrote to me kindly about the papers as origi- 
nally published in Science. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Origin of Right-handedness. 
§ I. Experimental. 

The question ' Why are we right- or left-handed ? ' has 
exercised the speculative ingenuity of many men. It has 
come to the front anew in recent years, in view of the 
advances made in the general physiology of the nervous 
system ; and certainly we are now in a better position to 
set the problem intelligently and to hope for its solution. 
Hitherto the actual conditions of the rise of 'dextrality ' in 
young children — as the general fact of uneven-handedness 
may be called — have not been closely observed. It was 
to gain light, therefore, upon the facts themselves that the 
experiments described in the following pages were carried 
out. 

My child H. was placed in a comfortable sitting posture, 
the arms left bare and free in their movement, and allowed 
to reach for objects placed before her in positions exactly 
determined and recorded by the simple arrangement of slid- 
ing rods already described. The experiments took place at 
the same hour daily, for a period extending from her fourth 
to her tenth month. These experiments were planned with 
very great care and with especial view to the testing of several 
hypotheses which, although superficial to those who have 
studied physiology, yet constantly recur in publications on 

58 



Experimental. 59 

this subject. 1 Among these theories certain may be men- 
tioned with regard to which my experiments were con- 
clusive. It has frequently been held that a child's right- 
handedness arises from the nurse's or mother's constant 
method of carrying it ; the child's hand which is left free 
being more exercised, and so becoming stronger. This 
theory is ambiguous as regards both mother and child. 
The mother, if right-handed, would carry the child on the 
left arm, in order to work with the right arm. This I find 
an invariable tendency with myself and with nurses and 
mothers whom I have observed. But this would leave the 
child's left arm free, and so a right-handed mother would 
be found with a left-handed child. Again, if the mother 
or nurse be left-handed, the child would tend to be right- 
handed. Or if, as is the case in civilized countries, nurses 
largely replace the mothers, it would be necessary that 
most of the nurses be left-handed in order to make most of 
the children right-handed. Now none of these deductions 
are true. Further, the child, as a matter of fact, holds on 
with both hands, however it is itself held. 

Another theory maintains that the development of right- 
handedness is due to differences in weight of the two 
lateral halves of the body ; this tends to bring more strain 
on one side than the other, and so to give more exercise, 
and so more development, to that side. This evidently 
assumes that children are not right- or left-handed before 
they learn to stand. This my results given below show to 
be false. Again, we are told that infants get right-handed 
by being placed on one side too much for sleep ; this can 

1 Cf. Vierordt's remarks, Physiologie des Kindesalters, pp. 428, 429. For a 
detailed statement of theories on this topic, see Chap. X. of the very learned 
monograph on The Right Hand : Left-handedness, by my late lamented col- 
league and friend Sir Daniel Wilson. 



6o 



The Origin of Right-handedness. 



be shown to have little force also, when the precaution is 
taken to place the child alternately on its right and left 
sides for its sleeping periods. 

In the case of the child H., certain precautions were 
carefully enforced. She was never carried about in arms 
at all, never walked with when crying or sleepless (a 
ruinous and needless habit to cultivate in an infant) ; she 
was frequently turned over in her sleep ; she was not 
allowed to balance herself on her feet until a later period 
than that covered by the experiments. Thus the condi- 
tions of the rise of the right-handed era were made as 
simple and uniform as possible. 

The experiments included, besides reaching for colours, 
a great many of reaching for other objects, at longer and 
shorter distances, and in unsymmetrical directions. The 
following table (III.) gives some details of the results of the 
experiments in which simple objects were used, extending 
over a period of four months, from the fifth to the ninth in 
her life. The number of experiments at each sitting varied 
from ten to forty ; the position of the child being reversed, 
as to light from windows, position of observation, etc., after 
half of each series. 

TABLE III. 



Date. 


No. of 
Series. 


No. of Ex- 
periments. 


Right 
Hand. 


Left 
Hand. 


Both 
Hands. 


1890. February 10th to March 15th 


30 


744' 


173 


166 


405 


March 14th to April 14th . . 


2 5 


623 


134 


I 4 I 


348 


April 14th to May 14th . . . 


25 


546 


213 


130 


203 


May 14th to June 19th . . . 


16 


274 


57 


131 


86 


Total 


96 


2,187 


577 


568 


1042 



Experimental. 



61 



It is evident from Table III. that no trace of preference 
for either hand is discernible during this period; indeed, 
the neutrality is as complete as if it had been arranged 
beforehand, or had followed the throwing of dice. 

I then conceived the idea that possibly a severer dis- 
tance test might affect the result and show a marked 
preferential response by one hand over the other. I 
accordingly continued to use a neutral stimulus, but placed 
it from 12 to 15 inches away from the child. This 
resulted in very hard straining on her part, with all the 
signs of physical effort (explosive breathing-sounds result- 
ing from the setting of the larynx, rush of blood to the 
head, seen in flushing of the face, etc., and flow of urine). 
Table IV. gives the results ; the number in each series was 
intentionally made very small, from one to twelve, in order 
to avoid fatigue. 

TABLE IV. 





Date. 


No. of 
Series. 


No. of 
Trials. 


Right 
Hand. 


Left 
Hand. 


Both 
Hands. 


1890. May 26th to June ioth 


32 


80 


74 


5 


I 





The same cases, distributed according to distance, give 
us Table V. 

TABLE v. 





12 Inches. 


13 Inches. 


14 Inches. 


15 Inches. 


Right hand 


29 


IO 


33 


2 


Left hand 


5 


— 


— 


— 


Both hands 


1 


— 


— 


— 



62 



The Origin of Right-handedness, 



A comparison of Tables IV. and V. with Table III. shows 
a remarkable difference. During the month ending June 
15th, the child showed no decided preference for either 
hand in reaching straight before her within the easy reach- 
ing distance of 10 inches, but a slight balance in favour 
of the left hand; yet she was right-handed to a marked 
degree during the same period as regards movements 
which required effort or strain, such as grasping for ob- 
jects 12 to 15 inches distant. For the greater distances, 
the left hand was used in only five cases as against sev- 
enty-four cases of the use of the right hand ; and further, 
all these five cases were twelve-inch distances, the left 
hand being used absolutely not at all in the forty-five cases 
at longer distances. 

In order to test this further, I varied the point of ex- 
posure of the stimulus to the right or left, aiming thus to 
attract the hand on one side or the other, and so to deter- 
mine whether the growth or such a preference was limited 
to experiences of convenience in reaching to adjacent local 
objects, etc. The result appears in Table VI. : — 

TABLE VI. 



June 10th to 20th. 


12 Inches. 


13 Inches. 


14 Inches. 


15 Inches. 


Hand used. 


Deviations from me- 










Right. 


Left. 


dian line — 














2 to 6 inches to 














left. . . . 


10 cases 


15 cases 


4 cases 


— 1 






2 to 6 inches to 










35 


— , 


right . . . 


2 " 


3 " 


1 " 


- J 






Sam e conditions with 














colour stimulus . 


— 


— 


— 


— 


15 


2 



Experimental. 63 

This table shows that deviation to the left in front of the 
body only called out the right hand to greater exertion, 
while the left hand fell into still greater disuse. This 
seems to show that dextrality is not derived from the 
experience of the individual in using either hand predomi- 
nantly for reaching, grasping, holding, etc., within the 
easiest range of that hand. The right hand intruded 
regularly upon the domain of the left. 

Proceeding upon the clew thus obtained, a clew which 
seems to suggest that the hand preference is influenced 
by the eye stimulus, I introduced hand observations into a 
series of experiments which I was making at that time on 
the same child's perception of the different colours ; think- 
ing that the colour stimulus which represented the strong- 
est inducement to the child to reach, might have the same 
effect in determining the use of the right hand as the 
increased distance in the experiments already described. 
This inference is proved to be correct by the results given 
in Table VII. : — 

TABLE VII. 

Colour stimulus, f Hand Right. Left. Both. \ May 23d to 

10 to 15 inches I Number of cases .86 2 — /june 19th. 

It should be added that in all cases in which both hands 
are said to have been used, each hand was called out with 
evident independence of the other, both about the same 
time, and both carried energetically to the goal. In many 
other cases in which either right or left hand is given in 
the tables, the other hand also moved, but in a subordinate 
and aimless way. There was a very marked difference 
between the use of both hands in some cases, and of one 
hand followed by, or accompanied by, the other in other 



64 The Origin of Right-handedness. 

cases. It was very rare that the second hand did not 
thus follow or accompany the first ; and this was extremely 
marked in the violent reaching for which the right hand 
was mainly used. This movement was almost invariably 
accompanied by an objectless and fruitless symmetrical 
movement of the other. 

The results of the entire series of experiments on the 
use of the hands may be stated as follows, mainly in the 
words in which I reported them summarily some time 
ago. 1 

i. I found no continued preference for either hand as 
long as there were no violent muscular exertions made, 
(based on 2187 systematic experiments in cases of free 
movement of hands near the body : i.e., right hand, 577 
cases ; left hand, 568 cases, — a difference of 9 cases ; 
both hands, 1042 cases; the difference of 9 cases being 
too slight to have any meaning) ; the period covered being 
from the child's sixth to her tenth month inclusive. 

2. Under the same conditions, the tendency to use 
both hands together was about double the tendency to 
use either (seen from the number of cases of the use of 
both hands in the statistics given above). 

3. A distinct preference for the right hand in violent 
efforts in reaching became noticeable in the seventh and 
eighth months. Experiments during the eighth month on 

1 Science, XVI., Oct. 31, 1890; discussed by James, Science, Nov. 8, 1890, 
by Dr. J. T. O'Connor, Ibid., XVI., 1890, p. 331, and by myself, Ibid., XVI., 
Nov. 28, 1890. The results are quoted in full in Nature, Nov. 13, 1890, and in 
part in the Illustrated london News, Jan. 17, 1891. See discussions of them 
also in Zeitsch. fiir Psychologie, II., 1891, p. 239; Wilson, The Right Hand : 
left-handedness, pp. 128-131; Revue Scientifique, 1891, II., p. 493; Mazel, 
Revue Scientifique, 1892, I., p. 113. Both writers in the last-named journal 
cite these experiments wrongly as Wilson's. 



Experimental. 65 

this cue gave, in 80 cases : right hand, 74 cases ; left hand, 
5 cases ; both hands, 1 case. This was true in two very 
distinct classes of cases : first, reaching for objects, neu- 
tral as regards colour (newspaper, etc.), at more than the 
reaching distance ; and, second, reaching for bright col- 
ours at any distance. Under the stimulus of bright colours, 
from 86 cases, 84 were right-hand cases and 2 left-hand. 
Right-handedness had accordingly developed under pres- 
sure of muscular effort in the sixth and seventh months, 
and showed itself also under the influence of a strong 
colour stimulus to the eye. 

4. Up to this time the child had not learned to stand or 
to creep ; hence the development of one hand more than 
the other is not due to differences in weight between the 
two longitudinal halves of the body. As she had not 
learned to speak or to utter articulate sounds with much 
distinctness, we may say also that right- or left-handedness 
may develop while the motor speech centre is not yet func- 
tioning. Further, the use of the right hand is carried 
over to the left side, showing that habit in reaching does 
not determine its use. 

5. In most cases involving the marked use of one hand 
in preference to the other, the second or backward hand 
followed slowly upon the lead of the first, in a way clearly 
showing symmetrical innervation of accompanying move- 
ments by the second hand. This confirms the inference 
as to such movements drawn from the phenomena of 
mirror-writing, etc., by Fechner and E. H. Weber. 1 

1 1 do not find, therefore, that these experiments warrant the negative in- 
ference on this question which Mtinsterberg has drawn from them : Beitrage 
zur Exp. Psych. , Heft IV., p. 197. 



66 The Origin of Right-handedness, 



§ 2. Theoretical. 

I. Some interesting points arise in connection with the 
interpretation of these facts. If it be true that the order 
of rise of mental and physiological functions is constant, 
then for this question the results obtained in the case 
of one child, if accurate, would hold for others apart from 
any absolute time determination. We would expect, there- 
fore, that these results would be confirmed by experiments 
on other children, and this is the only way their correct- 
ness can be tested. 1 

If, when tested, they should be found correct, they 
would be sufficient answer to several of the theories of 
right-handedness heretofore urged. The phenomenon can- 
not be due, as I have said, to differences in balance of the 
two sides of the body, for it arises before the body begins 
to stand erect. It cannot be due to experience in the use 
of either hand, since it arises when there is no such differ- 
ence of experience, and since the hand preferred is used, 
as a matter of fact, for purposes for which in experience 
the other would be altogether more convenient. 2 The rise 
of the phenomenon must be sought, therefore, in more 
deep-going facts of physiology than such theories supply. 

If, on the other hand, heredity be brought to the aid of 

1 Vierordt says concerning such experiments : " Adequate observations are 
wanting on the grasping movements of the infant's left and right arm — a 
kind of observation which would be of the first importance for this inquiry," 
Physiologie des Kindesalters, p. 428; and Wilson: "Only a prolonged series 
of observations, such as those by Professor Baldwin already noted, made at 
the first stage of life, and based on the voluntary and the unprompted actions 
of the child, can supply the needful data," Left-kandedness, p. 209. 

2 An additional point, which I think is true, is that a right-handed child 
learns to shake hands properly — using the more inconvenient hand across 
his body — more easily than the left-handed child. 



Theoretical. 6 J 

these 'experience* theories, it is possible to claim that, as 
structure is due to function, experience of function must 
have been first in race history; and only thus could the 
modification in structure which is now sufficient to produce 
right-handedness in individual cases have been brought 
about. On the other hand, if we go lower in the animal 
scale than man, analogies for the kinds of experience 
which are urged as reasons for right-handedness are not 
present ; animals do not carry their young, nor pat them 
to sleep, nor do animals shake hands ! It must therefore 
be shown that animals are right- or left-handed, or that 
they differ in some marked respect in regard to function, 
in their nervous make-up, from man. Admitting the need 
of meeting these requirements; admitting again that we 
have little evidence that animals are dextral in their func- 
tions ; admitting also the known results as to the control 
of the two halves of the muscular system by the opposite 
brain hemispheres respectively ; admitting further that the 
motor speech function is performed by the hemisphere 
which controls the stronger side of the body, and is adja- 
cent to the motor arm centre in that hemisphere; and 
admitting, finally, that the speech function is one in which 
the animals have little share — all these admissions lead 
us at once to the view that there is a fundamental connec- 
tion between the rise of speech and the rise of right- 
handedness. 1 

1 This much has been before surmised by Mazel, Revue Scientifique, 1892, 
I., p. 113. He makes no attempt, however, to account for the association, 
except by calling both functions expressive. Mr. F. H. Cushing has sent me 
a paper on 'Manual Concepts' {American Anthropologist, V '., 1892, p. 289) 
in which he gives interesting evidence from philology and race customs among 
various peoples of the direct influence of hand movements upon spoken and 
written language. He finds evidence that the Zufii and Roman numeral 



68 The Origin of Right-handedness. 

Looking broadly at the methods of nervous and mus- 
cular development, and accepting all the results of neu- 
rology we are able to gather, we may say that in the 
differentiation of functions in the animal series certain 
principles may be recognized: i. The deep-seated vital 
functions represent least nervous differentiation, as is seen 
in the simple organs known as the lower nervous centres. 
2. New symmetrical functions give a differential or two- 
fold organic development, the great instance of which is 
found in the cerebral hemispheres. 3. New asymmetri- 
cal or unilateral functions find their counterpart each in 
one of three kinds of nervous adaptation : (a) co-ordination 
of the hemispheres in a single function — i.e., functions 
which are crippled if either hemisphere is damaged ; 
(b) co-ordination of particular functions in each hemis- 
phere — i.e., functions which are not crippled unless both 
hemispheres are damaged; and (c) co-ordination of par- 
ticular functions in one hemisphere only — i.e., functions 
which are crippled only if one selected hemisphere is 
damaged. All these kinds of co-ordination exist. 

It is easy to see that both speech and right-handed func- 
tion belong under the last head of the last class — co-ordi- 
nations of particular functions in one hemisphere only — 

sounds are derived from hand words, and their numeral graphic signs are 
transcribed hand positions. It would be interesting also to inquire how far 
the right hand is predominant in gesture and sign languages, which precede 
articulate speech. Cushing points out that the left hand is usually a passive 
instrument which is manipulated actively by the right. The best report on 
sign-language is that of Mallery in Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, I., 1881, 
and the best discussion of the phenomenon is by Romanes, Ment. Evolution 
in Man, pp. 104 ff. I have asked Mr. Lester Jones, Fellow of Princeton Col- 
lege, to examine Col. Mallery's detailed reports of the actual signs employed 
in the sign-languages of the North American Indians, tabulating the cases in 
which either hand is used alone or predominately. I give Mr. Jones' results 
in Appendix B, with some remarks upon their value for our present inquiry. 



Theoretical. 69 

and that they belong in the same hemisphere. Why is 
this ? What have they in common ? 

A very essential kind of hand movements are the so- 
called ' expressive ' movements, meaning those which serve 
to convey a meaning, or express a state of consciousness. 
Of course, speech is par excellence the function of expres- 
sion. It is further only a part of the position upon which 
the psychological theory of expression is based, that all 
movements are in a sense expressive, and that details of 
expression and its relative fulness are matters of co-ordi- 
nation. Now, this co-ordination has attained its ripest and 
most complex form, apart from speech, 1 in movements of 
the hand. Upon this view it is easy to hold that right- 
handedness is a form of expressive differentiation of move- 
ment, and that it preceded speech, which is a further and 
more complex form of differentiation and adaptation. 

The neurological basis upon which this hypothesis rests 
is adequate, and affords a presumption as to the psycho- 
logical development as well. The facts I have now given 
for the first time, go some way to support the view: 

1. Right-handedness arose before speech in the child H. 

2. Imitation by the hand of movements seen arises before 
articulate imitations of sounds heard ; 2 this in spite of the 
fact that hearing, in its development in the child, becomes 
perfect before sight. 3. Characteristic differences in chil- 
dren in respect to their general mobility of arm and hand, 
manual skill, and quickness of manipulation, extend also 
to speech. As compared with my other child, E., the first- 
born, H., is remarkably agile and motile generally in her 

1 See physiological evidence, below, pp. 422, 424. 

2 Below, Chap. VI., § 4. It is interesting that of both hand and speech 
movements the latest to be lost in disease are those involved in the so-called 
' mimicry ' of movement and in imitative speech. 



7<d The Origin of Right-handedness, 

temperament; and her speech development was relatively- 
much earlier and more rapid. 

It is further interesting to note that musical ability is 
associated with speech ability — a connection which would 
be expected when one takes due account of the expressive 
character and function of music. As far as theories of 
the rise of musical expression have gone, they unite in 
finding its beginnings in the rudimentary emotional ex- 
pressions of the animals. The singing of birds is undoubt- 
edly connected with their mating instincts. Pathological 
cases also show a marked connection between musical exe- 
cution and speech, to the extent that, while musical defect 
almost invariably involves speech defects, the reverse is 
much less generally true — a fact which confirms the view 
that music is an earlier form, but still a form, of expressive 
reaction. 

Late observations also show, as far as they are sufficient, 
that the centre for music expression is also located nor- 
mally in the left hemisphere for right-handed persons. 
Oppenheim reports a case * of total aphasia with total 
amusia (lack of musical ability from disease) in which the 
recovery of speech brought with it musical recovery also. 
Furthermore, another case of Oppenheinrs shows motor 
aphasia with motor amusia only — i.e., the patient could 
still understand tunes, and, further, could imagine tunes 
1 in his head,' 2 while he could not sing them. This shows 
a close connection in locality between motor speech and 
motor music function, while a slight separateness of the 
two centres in locality in the left hemisphere explains 

1 Charite Annalen, XIII, 1888, p. 286. 

2 Cf. Chap. XIV., below, for further exposition of the mechanism of speech 
and the music function. 



Theoretical. 71 

cases of motor aphasia in which musical execution is pre- 
served. Further, Frankl-Hochwart declares that no cases 
are recorded of amusia from lesion in the right hemis- 
phere, 1 and Starr says of a patient of his : 2 " My patient 
is right-handed, and music does follow speech in being 
unilaterally located ; ... it is well proved that the musi- 
cal faculty is one-sided in location." Despite these posi- 
tive opinions, however, I think more critical cases with 
autopsy are necessary to make the position quite secure. 

The service which speech owes to gesture is emphasized 
by Romanes in the following words : " Although gesture 
language is not in my opinion so efficient a means of 
developing abstract ideation as is spoken language, it 
must nevertheless have been of much service in assisting 
the growth of the latter, and ... in laying the foundation 
of the whole mental fabric which has been constructed by 
the faculty of speech. Whether we look to children, to 
savages, or, in a lesser degree, to idiots, we find that ges- 
ture plays an important part in assisting speech; and in 
all cases where a vocabulary is scanty or imperfect, ges- 
ture is sure to be employed as the natural means of 
supplementing speech. . . . Therefore it is, in my opinion, 
perfectly certain that its origin and development must 
have been assisted by gesture. There can be no doubt 
that the reciprocal influence must have been great in both 
directions, and that it must have proceeded from gesture 
to speech in the first instance, and afterwards from speech 
to gesture." 

1 This means that all cases noted have been right-handed. Deutsche 
Zeitsch. fur Nervenheilkunde, 1891, I., p. 295, and foot-note. 

2 In a private letter. The case is referred to by Starr in The Psychological 
Review, January, 1894, p. 92. 



72 The Origin of Right-handedness. 

All this means simply that the general cause to which 
is due the fact of right-handedness is also the cause, 
through further differentiation and emphasis in the same 
local seat, of the development of speech and of musical 
ability. It now remains to ask: What was or is this 
cause, and when in the race-history series did it begin to 
operate ? There are only two hypotheses of any force — 
either that of ' experience,' or that of ' spontaneous varia- 
tion ' at some stage in biological development. 

It is extremely improbable that dextrality should have 
arisen among the quadrupeds, or amanous bipeds, for 
experience was lacking of unilateral stimulation, and a 
spontaneous variation of this kind would have produced 
such inconvenience of locomotion and ultimately such 
asymmetry of form that it would have been weeded out. 1 
As an extreme example, fancy a bird become dextral in its 
flight. 2 

As soon as we come to bipeds with hands, however, 
these reasons do not hold. Their locomotion does not 
depend on manual symmetry, and any dextrality, however 
slight, would be of direct advantage in climbing, fighting, 
breaking sticks, and pulling fruit ; since a disproportionate 
growth of one side would give that side greater strength 
than either side would possess in animals of symmetrical 
development in the same environment. A very strong 
one-armed man can keep at bay a weaker man with two 
arms, or destroy him ; and this is emphasized in animals, 
where brute force is the only resource. It is difficult to 

1 For this reason the human leg, as Brown-Sequard says, is not as one- 
sided as the arm. Any great unevenness would produce lameness and relative 
incapacity. 

2 The only evidence I know of such a thing is that a cat swims in a circle; 
but then dogs and horses do not, and these do not drown, while the cat does. 



Theoretical. 73 

find, however, in the habits of simians any ground for 
believing that there has been a form of unilateral stimula- 
tion which would act to effect a structural change in one 
hemisphere over and above the other. This, rather than 
the anatomical causes suggested by Romanes, may be 
the reason that the animals have not developed speech. 
Their conditions of life stimulation are such that there 
has been no chance for the development of the centre 
for ' expression ' in the left temporal brain-lobe. They 
have been compelled to maintain bilateral balance of 
function. 

But, apart from this, there is every reason to expect, 
quite independently of function, that two organs of such 
comparative separateness and independence of function 
as the two hemispheres would not remain exactly balanced 
in function ; in short, spontaneous variations giving advan- 
tageous dextrality would inevitably arise and persist as 
soon as the habits of life were not such that more impor- 
tant functions, such as locomotion, tended to suppress them 
and restore bilateral equilibrium. 1 There are, as far as I 
know, very few published observations of fact in regard 
to simian or animal dextrality. 2 

1 It is on this point that I differ from Wilson, who claims that, while some 
are naturally right- or left-handed, most people owe the peculiarity to educa- 
tion; the evidence against Wilson's view, apart from my present results, is 
well put by Mazel, loc. cit. 

2 I know only the assertion of Vierordt that parrots grasp and hold food 
with the left claw, that lions strike with the left paw, and his quotation from 
Livingstone — 'All animals are left-handed' (Vierordt, loc. cit., p. 428). 
Dr. W. Ogle reports observations on parrots and monkeys in Trans. Royal 
Med. and Chirur. Society, 1 87 1. Dr. Ogle informs me in a private letter that 
the chimpanzee which recently died in the Zoological Garden in London was 
discovered by him to be left-handed. I have addressed a circular letter to 
some of the officials in zoological institutions here and abroad, and hope to 



74 The Origin of Right-handedness, 

It is likely, therefore, that right-handedness in the child 
is due to differences in the two half-brains, reached at an 
early stage in life, that the promise of it is inherited, and 
that the influences of infancy have little effect upon it. 
Yet, of course, regular habits of disuse or of the cultiva- 
tion of the other hand may, as the child grows up, 
diminish or destroy the disparity between the two. And 
this inherited brain-onesidedness also accounts for the 
association of right-handedness, speech, and music faculty, 
the speech function being a further development of the 
same unilateral power of movement found first in right- 
or left-handedness. 

II. A further point of psychological interpretation is of 
some interest. How are we to account for the fact that 
a bright colour stimulus exposed at a lesser distance 
brought out the right hand, while a neutral stimulus 
required a greater distance? 

The general fact may be expressed in the symbols of 
the formula which I have proposed for the so-called 

gather some facts in this way. If it should prove true that the lower animals 
are left-sided, then the current view that right-handed children have a pre- 
liminary period of left-handedness — a view to which my Table III., above, 
gives some support — might have its explanation in the hypothesis of the repe- 
tition of phylogenetic development in the individual child. 

It is evident that on this theory of spontaneous variation any change 
which produced a permanent organic superiority of one hemisphere would 
be sufficient, and the view that the difference in the hemispheres is due to 
a better blood supply to the left hemisphere might thus have its justification. 
As a matter of fact, the arterial arrangements do seem to indicate a more 
direct blood supply to the left hemisphere (cf. the note of Dr. J. T. O'Connor, 
apropos of my experiments, in Science, XVI., 1890, p. 331). It is an interest- 
ing inquiry whether this arterial arrangement is reversed in left-handed per- 
sons. Wilson cites two cases in which there was no such correspondence 
(Joe. cit. t p. 179). 



Theoretical, 75 

dynamogenic method of experimentation. It will be re- 
membered that in the formula 1 

D represented the drawing-out tendency, the amount of 

dynamogeny exercised by a given stimulus ; q the quality 

of this stimulus (colour, etc.); and d the distance. If 

the tendency to use one particular hand in preference to 

the other hand be designated by r, we now find from the 

experiments that 

r= K -d, (1) 

but, by the general law that distance decreases influence, 

D=*- l d -> (2) 

consequently, r = te • — • (3) 



Again, we find from the experiments that 



(4) 



$ (colour) 

but D=K-q\ (5) 

consequently, r= k • — » (6) 

the same result as (3). 

So it seems from both results of the experiments that 
right-handedness varies inversely as the dynamogenic influ- 
ence of the stimulus, whether that dynamogenic influence 
be colour or distance. 

The question of interpretation, then, is this : How does 
it come that increasing distance, which would be sup- 
l Above, Chap. II., § 3. 



J 6 The Origin of Right-handedness, 

posed to lessen the calling-out force of a stimulus by- 
lessening its intensity, clearness, etc., yet tends to do 
exactly what a bright colour at a lesser distance does, i.e., 
to call out increased dynamogeny, with the use of the 
right hand? 

Of course the explanation is evident enough. The child 
has learned by experience, or has inherited an organic 
experience, that more effort, higher D, is necessary in the 
case of a more distant stimulus ; and so a central supply 
goes out to reinforce the influence D of this distant 
stimulus, and the right-handedness is the evidence of 
this reinforced D. We would expect, on the other hand, 
that the colour, being itself a more dynamogenic stimu- 
lus, would have the same effect, without the central rein- 
forcement, and also bring out the right hand. 1 And so it 
does. 

A farther point of interest is seen in the inhibition of 
the movement altogether when the distance is slightly 
increased, i.e., to fifteen inches or over, as given in the 
tables. It shows that even at the age of this child very- 
accurate visual estimation of distance has already been 
acquired, as I had occasion to say in the last chapter. 
The child's interpretation of the distance inhibits all 
effort to reach across it. The interpretations undoubtedly 
result, in the case of the child, in my opinion, from 

1 On this point, Professor William James writes {Science, Nov. 14, 1890, 
p. 295), apropos of my experiments when first announced : "These observa- 
tions seem very interesting, as showing how strong (attractive) stimuli may pro- 
duce more definitely localized reactions than weaker ones. The baby grasped 
at bright colours with the right hand almost exclusively." I find this but 
natural, not because the reaction is ' more definitely localized,' but because 
that is an incident to a larger and more massive discharge through the particu- 
lar channel which is ready for it. 



Theoretical, 77 

associations of visual indications of distance with sensa- 
tions of hand and arm movement. And I find that 
this association gives rise to three determinations — all 
matters of experience and all becoming remarkably re- 
fined — (1) the safe-reaching distance (use of either hand 
or both) ; (2) the uncertain-reaching distance (use of right 
hand); and (3) the impossible-to-reach distance (no hand 
movement, but a turning away of face and body). 

The process of learning this lesson in distance, and with 
it the waxing ability of the stronger hand, is so graphically 
described by James in a private letter that I quote it, with 
his permission : " Admitting the experience hypothesis 
(which I adopt from you now, 1 since I have made no ob- 
servations, and your sense of what is likely in this regard 
seems to me to have great weight), the way I represent 
the matter to myself is thus : The child originally re- 
sponds to all optical excitements which strike his atten- 

1 In view of my letter in Science, Nov. 28, 1890, p. 302. He adds, how- 
ever, after the above quotation : " Although I have made every possible con- 
cession to the experience theory, as adopted by you, I must say that the notion 
of a specialized native impulsiveness for the right hand when certain distances 
appeal to the eye lingers in my mind as that of a natural possibility." This 
is refuted, I think, by the fact that infants at first ' grasp at the moon ' with 
either hand indiscriminately, the ' moon ' standing for any object at any dis- 
tance. The possibility of such native adaptations cannot be doubted, for 
some young animals seem to have different native responses adjusted to 
different distances; but in the case of the child, experience seems to be waited 
for to develop many things which are really native. 

I endeavoured to test H.'s native sense of locality on the body, apart 
from the association with sight, by dangling my watch-chain gently from day 
to day on the top of her head, and by gently pinching one or other of her 
ears occasionally, watching the movements of her hands in their search for 
the chain and the ear. Up to about the middle of her third month the hand 
movements seemed perfectly random, ' up ' and ' back ' being about the only 
tendencies which indicated any sense of locality whatever. In the third 
month, however, she seemed to begin to learn where to find the objects, 
especially the ear; but the success was apparently due to the experience. 



78 The Origin of Right-handedness, 

tion by bounding up and down, and moving both arms. 
Ere long the movement becomes one of grasping with 
both. Some graspings prove easy, and the original bi- 
lateral medianism continues for a while associated with 
these. Others are protracted; and the superior native 
efficiency of the right hand, in reaching the goal, here 
acts so as to inhibit the left hand altogether when the 
stimulus suggests a case of this kind. Others, again, 
never succeed, the object being beyond range altogether; 
and all movements are inhibited for these at last." 

Now, the point to be observed is this, that the dynamo- 
genie effect of distance (d in the formula) is not natively 
provided for, as is that of quality (q, colour in this case) : 
it is an acquired effect, called out through experiences of 
relative distance. Relative distances are ' interpreted ' in 
terms of past experience, and this gives them their pres- 
ent force. The course of the nervous disturbance is 
through the higher circuit which association involves, and 
which on the motor side implicates attention ; while the 
dynamogenic effect of colour or of sensation qualities 
generally, which prompt native reactions, is by a lower 
reflex circuit. One is an ideo-motor reaction, based on 
association ; the other is a native sensori-motor reaction. 

It is necessary, therefore, again to alter profoundly our 
conception of the simplest dynamogenic formula in view 
of the element of association in the simplest reaction in- 
volving distance. And it is easy to see what becomes of 
the formula as soon as association gets to be a little com- 
plex : for d y we must substitute a symbol to stand for the 
central influence as a whole, say <f>; and of course with 
increasing complexity of experience the meaning of <f> 
becomes more and more recondite. With adults, there- 



Theoretical. 79 

fore, such a formula would be in most cases nothing more 
than tautology. 1 With infants it remains useful only for 

1 The only way to experiment on volition, accordingly, is by using com- 
parative stimulations of no meaning or association, or by keeping the associa- 
tion element constant, by using the same stimulation repeatedly. I have 
endeavoured to experiment on volition by observing the effect on action of the 
same stimulation apprehended through different senses, i.e., the tendency to 
draw a figure seen in one case and traced by the hand in the other (JProc. Cong. 
Exper. Psych., London, 1892, p. 51); see also below, Chap. XIII., § 3. 

A further point deserves a word. In the original announcement of these 
experiments I found it necessary to think that the child's reaching with the 
right hand only in cases involving long distances and effort could not be ex- 
plained without supposing that her sense of motor discharge in the case of 
effort was something different from that in case of movements without effort, 
i.e., that there was a central sense of motor potential of some kind. Profes- 
sor James in Science and in private letters, and Professor Dewey later in a 
private letter, suggest that the child might be guided by its sense of greater 
success, skill, ease, etc., in the case of earlier right-hand movements — all 
peripheral, not central, elements. I am not strenuous for my interpretation; 
indeed the other seems to me now more natural and simple. It is to be hoped 
that more experiments will be forthcoming; but with my experience with both 
my children I find certain facts which I cannot explain on the peripheral view : 
(1) The child does not show differences of ease, skill, etc., in favour of either 
hand at this early age, as far as can be detected; (2) after beginning to use 
the right hand for strenuous efforts the two hands are still used indiscrimi- 
nately for easy movements, near distances, etc. How can this be explained? 
Why should not the child economize — as adults do — in all movements, using 
the right hand after experience of its * greater efficiency ' for everything, when 
circumstances permit? The view of Professor James seems to require what 
I may call a ' cat and kitten ' arrangement of nervous discharges, i.e., certain 
pathways of voluminous discharge for right-hand movements opened up by 
earlier more successful movements, and, at the same time, other pathways/??' 
the same discharges when less voluminous — not due to the earlier successful 
movements. We have not knowledge enough to say it may not be; but it 
looks to me like a ' large hole for the cat and a little hole for the kitten ' — 
an arrangement which Professor James argues against, at least in one con- 
nection (Princ. of Psychology, Vol. I., p. 592). But that the child does ex- 
tend the use of the right hand, even when circumstances would seem to dis- 
courage it, is seen in, (3), the very striking fact, that the right hand is used 
to grasp objects, etc., which lie on the left side of the child; movements in which 
the left hand would seem to have actually more skill, ease, and practice. 
Professor Ladd seems to accept my first interpretation {Psychology, Descriptive 
and Explanatory, p. 222). 



80 The Origin of Right-handedness, 

such elementary experiences as those I have enumerated 
above. 

Again, as at the end of the last chapter, I must call 
attention not only to the complication which these experi- 
ments give to the method of studying children, but also to 
the fine uniformity which appears through them in the 
working of the law of dynamogenesis, upon which rests the 
theory of development stated in the following chapters. 



CHAPTER .V. 

Infants' Movements. 

§ i. Descriptive; Tracery Imitation. 

In earlier chapters, the general conditions of infant's 
responses in movement have been pointed out and some 
special problems set : a few points of interest may now be 
further brought up in connection with the rise of the more 
complex movements. 

From the beginning of independent life, movement is 
the infant's natural response to all influences. And, more 
than this, Bain and Preyer seem to have made out their 
case, that from the outset there are movements which are 
spontaneous, due to discharge of the motor centres unso- 
licited by definite external stimulations. At any rate, no 
observation made after birth can decide the question one 
way or the other whether sensation or movement is the 
earlier fact in ontogenetic development. It remains for 
the embryologists to continue their work, and this is 
where Preyer's results get their principal value. 

Reflexes. — In regard to movements more properly reflex 
and responsive, I may record a few detached observations 
on my child. Carefully planned experiments with her, 
made in the ninth month, showed the native walking 
reflex — alternative movement of the legs — very strongly 
g 8i 



82 Infants Movements. 

marked. I held her by the body, having made the legs 
quite free, in a position which allowed the bare feet to 
rest lightly upon a smooth table. The reflex seemed to 
come somewhat suddenly, for up to the middle of the 
eighth month I could not discover more than a single 
alternation ; and this I had determined not to take as evi- 
dence, since it might well arise by chance. But, in the 
ninth month, I observed as many as three and four well- 
regulated alternations, in succession. At first most of 
these movements were the reverse of the natural walking 
movements, being oftenest such as would carry the child 
backward. This, however, passed away. I have the fol- 
lowing note on June 13, 1890, the child being one day 
short of nine months old : " Walking movements, 3 to 4 
alternations, backwards oftenest, but tending rapidly to 
forward movements ; later, 2 experiments, each showing 3 
to 4 alternations forwards very plainly ; " and on June 19 : 
" Fine activity in walking reflex — good alternations, but 
more backwards than forwards — clearly reflex, from stim- 
ulus to the soles." It is easy to see that this backward 
alternation 1 might be due to some accident of stimulation 
or discharge when the reflex was first called out ; a ten- 
dency which early efforts at creeping would soon correct. 
Yet in H.'s case, it was so marked that for a period she 
preferred to creep backward. 2 

A few observations were made aiso upon unilateral 

1 Two other cases of this have been verbally reported to me ; but I am not 
sure of the conditions under which one of them was observed. The second 
exact observation I owe to Professor Cattell. 

2 For interesting experiments on the method and variations of walking by 
different children of both sexes and by adults, see H. Vierordt, Der Gang des 
Menschen (Tubingen, 1881). Similar valuable observations might be made 
by measurements of the intervals, directions, etc., of children's footprints in 
the damp yielding sand of the seashore. 



Descriptive. 8$ 

reflexes. 1 A gentle touch with finger or feather on the 
cheek, or beside the nose, or upon the ear, when H. was 
sleeping quietly upon her back, called out always the hand 
on the same side. After two or three such irritations, 
her sleep became troubled and she turned upon the bed, 
or used both hands to rub the place stimulated. Tickling 
of the sole of the foot also, besides causing a reaction in the 
same foot, tended to bring about a movement of the hand 
on the same side. These observations, not a large number, 
were made in the sixth, seventh, and eighth months. 

In order to test the growth of voluntary control over 
the muscles of the hand and fingers, I determined to 
observe the phenomena of H.'s attempts at drawing and 
writing, for which she showed great fondness as soon as 
imitation was well fixed. Selecting a few objects well 
differentiated in outline, — animals which she had already 
learned to recognize and name after a fashion, — I drew 
them one by one on paper and let her imitate the ' copy.' 
The results I have in a series of ' drawings ' of hers, ex- 
tending from the last week of her nineteenth month to 
the middle of the twenty-seventh month. The results 
show that, with this child, up to the beginning of the 
twenty-seventh month there was no connection apparent 
between a mental picture in consciousness and the move- 
ments made by the hands and fingers in attempting to 
draw it. The * drawing ' was simply the vaguest and most 
general imitation of the teacher's movements, not the 
tracing of a mental picture. And the attempt was no 
better when a ' copy ' was made by myself on the paper — 

1 Cf. Kussmaul, Untersuchungen zur Seelenleben der Neugebornen Menschen, 
p. 18, for similar experiments ; and Vierordt, in GerhardCs Handbuch der 
Kinderkrankheiten, I., p. 215. 



8 4 



Infants Movements. 



a rough outline drawing of a man, etc. There was no 
semblance of conformity between the child's drawing and 
the copy. Further, while she could identify the copy and 
name the animal, she could not identify her own effort, 
except so far as she remembered what object she set out 
to make. See Figures I., II., III., and IV., for speci- 
mens illustrating the straightness and rigidity of her early 
attempts. 




Man: 19th month. 



V^^W 




Cat: 10th month. Man: 20th month. 

Fig. I.— Early Drawings with Copy. 





Man: 20th month. Bird: 20th month. 

Fig. II. — Early Drawings without Copy. 

With it all there was on her face an expression of dis- 
satisfaction with her later attempts, similar to that which 
one observes in the efforts of the year-old to speak. My 
little girl would hide her head after making a drawing, 
extend the pencil to me, and say, 'Papa make man.' It 
seemed to indicate a sense of what was expected beyond 
the ability to attain the process of accomplishing it. 



Tracery Imitation. 



85 



In Figs. III. and IV. we see some growth in variety of 
shape and direction with increased mobility of the hand 
and arm, but still no imitation in outline is apparent. 





b. Cat. d. Cow. 

Fig. III. — Drawings without Copy: End of 25TH Month. 





M 



a. Man (two trials). b- Bird. 

Fig. IV.— With Copy: Early in 26TH Month. 
Fig. V. shows further complications in movement. 





a, Man : with copy. b. Man : without copy. 

Fig. V. — Later more Complicated Drawings. 



86 Infants Movements. 

In the nature of the movements which the child made 
in this series of drawings, there is marked change and 
development which may be briefly described. There is 
growth from angular straight lines to curves, from move- 
ments one way exclusively to reverse movements, and an 
increasing tendency to complex intricate figures, which 
last probably results from greatly increased ease, variety, 
and rapidity of movement. At first she made only sweep- 
ing 'arm movements,' then began to flex the wrist some- 
what, and toward the end of the series given above, as is 
evident in the figures, with no teaching, manipulated the 
pencil with her fingers considerably. This seems to give 
support to the opinion of professional writing-teachers 
that the ' arm movement ' is most natural and effective for 
purposes of penmanship. 

Further, all her curves were made by movements from 
left to right going upward and from right to left down- 
ward, like the movements of the hands of a clock (see the 
arrow-heads in Fig. V. a). This is the method of our 
usual writing as contrasted with 'back-hand.' She also 
preferred lateral to vertical movements on the paper. Her 
most frequent and easy ' drawing ' consisted of a series of 
rapid right and left strokes almost parallel to one another, 
constituting very narrow and long loops. 

But early in the twenty-seventh month a change came. 
I drew a rough human figure, naming the parts in succes- 
sion as they were made : she suddenly seemed to catch 
the idea of tracing each part, and she now for the first 
time began to make figures with vertical and horizontal 
proportion ; i.e., she followed the order she saw me take : 
1 head ' (circle), ' body ' (ellipse) below, ' legs ' (two straight 
lines) further below, 'hands' (two lines) at the sides of 



Tracery Imitation. 87 

the body. It was all done in the crudest fashion, as 
would be expected from the lack of muscular co-ordina- 
tion. But the fact was unmistakable that with the sim- 
plification of the figure by breaking it up into parts had 
come also the idea of tracery imitation, and its imperfect 
execution. By the 'idea' of tracery imitation, I mean 
the sense of connection between what was visually in her 
own consciousness and the movement of her own hand 
or pencil. The visual pictures or copies had been there 
in all her previous trials, and so had the hand move- 
ments, both the sight of them and the muscular sensations ; 
but there had been no sense of a connection between 
them and agreement in the result when they were com- 
pared. 

As yet, however, it was limited to two or three copies — 
objects which she saw me make. That it was now not 
simply imitation of my movements is evident from the 
fact that she did not imitate my movements : she looked 
intently upon the figure which I made, not at my move- 
ments, and then strove to imitate the figure with move- 
ments of her own very different from mine. But she had 
not generalized the idea away from particular figures, for 
she could not trace at all an altogether new figure in right 
lines. Further, she traced these particular figures just 
as well without written copies before her : here, therefore, 
is the rise of the tracery imitation of the child's own mental 
picture — a fact of great theoretical interest. 

Fig. VI. reproduces the first successful imitation of 
a visual copy, the copy which she imitated being also 
given. 

Figs. VII. and VIII. show further development in free- 
dom and complication. 



88 



Infants Movements. 



A curious phenomenon, which has been noticed also by 
Passy 1 in the drawings of much older children, was evident 
in H.'s attempts to extend her drawings to other objects. 
This is the tendency to neglect the new object or copy and 





Copy. b. Drawing: l.head; 2, body; 3, 4, legs; 5, 6, arms 

(all in the order in which they were made). 

Fig. VI. — First Successful Tracery Imitation: Dec. 8, 1891 (Last Week 
of 27TH Month). 

substitute for it in whole or part some drawing which she 
had already learned to make. For example, having ana- 
lyzed man after me into head, body, legs, and arms, this 

1 Revue Philosophique, December, 1891, p. 614. 



Tracery Imitation. 



8 9 



became her scheme for drawing all other creatures. When 
told to draw a bird after a copy set before her, she gave it 
all these features, conforming them in a measure to the 
general shape of a bird, but putting two strokes at the 




a. With copy. b. Without copy. 

F16. VII. — Man: Dec. 13, 1891 (Last Day of 27TH Month). 

sides for arms. I shall say more about this fact in the 

next section in discussing the origin of handwriting ; it is 

also suggestive in connection with the rise of the general 

notion. 1 

1 See below, Chap. XI., § 1. 



9Q 



Infants Movements. 



The differences to be seen by comparing a. and b. in 
each of the Figs. VI. and VIII. show the degree in which 




With copy- 



Without copy. 



Fig. VIII. — Late Drawings: Man (28TH Month). The Words written 
in Figs. VII. a. and VIII. b. are from the Child's own Utterances, 
taken down at the Time, as she drew the Several Parts. The 
apparent facial outline in a. of this figure is, i think, purely 
accidental. 



Interpretation of Tracery Imitation, 91 

the child was still dependent upon the external visual copy 
for the control of her imitation tracings. She copied her 
memory picture, at least when she had no external copy ; 
but she controlled the reproduction by the copy, when she 
had it. 

§ 2. Interpretation of Tracery Imitation: the Origin of 
Handwriting. 

It is easily seen that the fact to which I have given the 
name ' tracery imitation ' lies at the basis of handwriting. 
It is clear that handwriting is acquired by imitation of 
a copy. Each letter is acquired by the tracing out of a 
form put before the child. There are two very distinct 
steps, however, in the acquisition of handwriting, the first 
of which is tracery imitation of an external copy ; and the 
second is the similar imitation of a memory picture or 
form. The relation of these two things to each other 
and, with that, the general theory of handwriting, requires 
farther analysis. I shall depict in some detail the pro- 
gress of this function, since it serves to illustrate the gen- 
eral theory of the development of muscular control worked 
out in a later chapter. 

The preliminary question as to how the child gets its 
visual apprehension of form may be answered, and has 
been, in two ways. Some hold that the actual form or 
arrangement of the retinal elements stimulated by the 
rays of light from the object seen is conveyed to con- 
sciousness by a series of 'local signs' — distinct quality 
of some kind which serves to distinguish each visual or 
anatomical point from every other. Others hold that the 
eye explores in its movement the outline of the object, 
and a constant succession of sensations of eye-movement 



92 Infants Movements. 

thus represents the particular form explored. It is safe 
to say that, whether one or both of these causes operate 
to give the child its form intuition, we can still say that 
there is a constant series of sensations from the eyes, 
which can be run over in one direction, or the reverse ; 
this we may call the ' visual form series,' v, v, v"> in 
the analysis of handwriting. 

But the child, in setting out to draw, moves his hand, 
thus getting sensations from the hand itself according to 
its locality at this moment and at that. If you consider 
the hand as moving slowly, it will be evident that there are 
touch sensations, joint sensations, muscle-tension sensa- 
tions, etc., giving together a certain massive sense of the 
locality of the hand as it goes from place to place. With 
no care as to the exact characters of these sensations, we 
may yet say that there is a series which is constant for the 
drawing of the outline of a plane figure ; this series we 
may call the ' muscular form series,' denoted by m, m\ fri'. 

But, further, the child has other means of finding out 
about movements than by the sensations from his own 
hand and arm. He sees other people's movements and his 
own. In this case of drawing, he is instructed in holding 
his pencil, sees his teacher move his pencil over the paper, 
sees his own arm and hand and pencil-point in each case. 
This, it is evident, gives a more or less exact additional 
series of eye sensations, according as the child is able 
by frequent following of the movements of others and 
himself to appropriate each such set of movements to a 
regular visual form. This third series of sensations in a 
particular case, we may call the ' optical movement series,' 
o, o,' o" etc. 

It is evident that the acquisition of writing involves all 



The Origin of Handwriting, 93 

of these three series ; and it is easy to show that they are 
all present in our most rapid and careless writing. If one 
shut his eyes and write, he preserves the general form of 
the letters, but they are badly made compared with those 
which he makes when he sees his pen and follows its 
movement. This shows his dependence upon the o series. 
But he can still very greatly improve his penmanship if 
his paper be ruled, or more again if he write after a well- 
written copy ; this shows the dependence, relatively slight, 
upon the v series. As to the revival of the v series 
also, as copies to which to conform, cases of verbal 
blindness show that lesions of the optical brain centre 
may make it impossible for one to write at all. 1 Further, 
if we try to write with the skin benumbed with cold, or on 
a surface which yields, the letters are made without form 
and thrown out of their due proportion. This in turn 
shows the continual presence of the m series. 2 

That a child gets his visual form (v) series first is proved 
from his recognition and even naming of figures, pictures, 
etc., before he draws them or sees them drawn. These 
series are at first few, but he gradually adds to them as 
the range of his exploration becomes wider and as familiar 
objects become in his experience more and more familiar. 
There is a constant tendency, therefore, from the random 
wandering of the eyes over many forms and over shape- 
less things, to concentration on interesting, familiar, and 
regular forms of things. So we may say there is a con- 
tinual growth and upbuilding of different v series. 

1 See cases cited by Brazier, Revue philosophique, October, 1892, p. 338. 

2 See Goldscheider's demonstration of the importance of pressure sen- 
sations in handwriting, Physiologie u. Pathologie der Handschrift, in Zeit- 
schrift fur Psychiatrie, XXIV., 1892. 



94 Infants Movements. 

This is at the expense of the optical movement (o) 
series, as may be seen from the following considerations : 
At first the child follows all movements, which he sees, of 
himself and of others, with equal attention — his eye is a 
slave to movement anywhere and everywhere — his atten- 
tion is reflex and visual. He looks closely at his own 
movements. His visual figure series follows in conscious- 
ness the cue set by his optical movement series, term by 
term, thus : — 



<- 




o, 


o; 


o", 


o , 


etc., 






\ 


\ 


\ 


\ 






<- 


— v, 


■v, 


v", 




etc. 



But when he learns, as I have said, to select his v series, 
he then reverses his association and so has to select out 
certain o series. He sees and attends to the movements 
that interest him, the things that concern him ; he prefers 
the toys which his eye explores by preference. So, contin- 
ually, the o series get broken up and formed anew, accord- 
ing as the o elements are lined up anew under the lead of 
the v series, thus : — 

etc., 
etc. 



v, 


v\ 




/// 


\ 




\ 

o", 


\ 

o , 



Now there, in this association, is the rise of ' tracery im- 
itation' in its crudest form; this reversal of association 
tween the o and the v elements. Its characteristics, as 
imitation, are merely the vaguest indications of direction 
and proportion. It utilizes no constant m series ; that is, 
no constant detailed series of hand and arm movements, 
but only the up and down, and right and left, movements 
acquired by the child in its early random exercises, to- 



The Origin of Handwriting. 95 

gether with whatever more definite movements education 
may have produced. As I interpret it, H.'s ability sud- 
denly to ' imitate ' my drawing of a man was largely the 
discovery that by a series of ordinary movements of her 
own which she saw (0 element), and which her random 
practice had made easy, she could bring about, in a meas- 
ure, what I did. Instead of her eye following the tracing 
left by the point of the pen (v series subordinated to o 
series), as formerly it did, she now found that her hand 
and pen, as she watched them, could follow the outline I 
had made, or her memory of it (p series subordinated to 
the v series). 

Such as it is, however, tracery imitation is a long way 
from handwriting. And the essential difference is the 
introduction of sensations of movement (m series), whereby 
the operations of the hand are held in control. How, 
then, does the m series get its influence ? 

Eye movements start in a chaotic random state, as 
we have seen, and only gradually take on the definite 
character of separate series, as the customary explorations, 
fixations, visual curiosities of experience serve to fix them. 
But arm movements are just the reverse. At first the arm 
is capable of very few movements, the elbow of one, and 
the fingers of none. Moreover, the joints are stiff, the 
movements to a degree inconvenient, and all ventures away 
from certain reactions provided for by native arrangements, 
are painful and unsuccessful. This means that the child 
starts with certain very definite arm movements (m series). 
But this does not last. He gets limbered up. His m series 
gets broken into units and recombined into new series. 
This is seen in the progress shown in H.'s series of draw- 
ings given above. 



96 Infants Movements. 

This prepares the way for a second victory of the v 
series. At first the hand must move in certain directions 
represented in consciousness by the series m, m, m", etc. ; 
the eye can move in any direction indifferently ; so the 
eye follows the hand, and we have in consequence : — 



m t m , m , m , etc., 

\ \ \ \ 

— v, v, v", if", etc. 



But as the m J s get broken up out of their native series, 
and the v's get tied together into series, there comes a con- 
flict for leadership followed by the reverse association : — 



v> 


v, 


v , 


etc., 


\ 


\ 
m, 


\ 
m , 


etc. 



Now certain muscular sensations (m elements) represent 
movements which, being also seen, have o elements attached 
to them. And we have already seen that tracery imitation 
requires a certain correspondence between relatively fixed 
v series and relatively free o series. The breaking up of 
the m series just described now makes it possible for more 
of these correspondences to occur, i.e., for more movements 
seen to describe figures seen. Now it is by the gradual 
increase of these correspondences, this practice and empha- 
sis into habit, that handwriting is built up with much 
effort. 

There is, therefore, an extremely close association be- 
tween a visual figure series and the series of hand move- 
ments required to reproduce it. And this association 
between them is secured by the reproduction concomi- 
tantly through the seen hand movements (0 series) of 
a real figure which conforms to the original visual ideal 



The Origin of Handwriting. 97 

by which the whole is prompted. To complicate our illus- 
tration, this is what we finally get : — 

< v, v\ v", v"\ etc., 

\ \ \ \ 

< o, o\ d\ o"\ etc., 

\ \ f \ n \ 
< m, m, m" t m'" t etc. 

It is easy to see, therefore, that in handwriting the 
movements made are controlled by two different but con- 
curring agencies : first, the sensations in the arm and 
hand must be, point by point, those called for by the fast 
associations of movement with letter outlines. This ten- 
dency is actually so strong in the young child who has 
learned to make a few figures successfully, that it draws 
new objects like the old shapes, even when they are really 
very different, and in spite of close attention to the plain 
copies put before them. And, second, the figure which 
the eye takes in as the pen point inscribes it, must also 
agree, point by point, with the outline figure which is held 
in consciousness and aimed at. 

With the further development of handwriting, the per- 
formance tends to become independent of sight. In swift 
writing we use our eyes mainly to keep on the line and on 
the paper, not to see that the letters are made properly. 
As far as we do examine them, it is only to see that they 
fall within the limits of legibility ; and we know so well 
about what our hand can do, that we rarely have occa- 
sion to revise a word once written. The muscular series 
(m series) becomes so delicately adjusted to the needs 
of the memory image of figure, of letter, and of word 
(y series), that a further optical test (p series) is not 
required. 



98 Infants Movements. 

It is interesting to note, also, that this growing inde- 
pendence in the sensations of movement under practice 
and habit may go so far that the visual copy (v series) 
may be dispensed with altogether ; this is shown to be 
true in pathological cases of alexia, or inability to read, 
which do not involve agraphia, or inability to write. In 
these cases we have the extreme motor type of verbal 
memory, emphasized by Strieker : persons who remember 
written words by the memory of the sensations involved in 
writing them. 

A further fundamental question arises, however, when 
we come to examine the actual parallelism of the associ- 
ated series of elements involved. How does it come about 
that the child is able to secure the agreement, term 
by term, between the elements of the v and the m 
series respectively — the agreement by which this associa- 
tion is established ? How does he get v with *#, v with 
m\ v" with m", in this regular way, and both in proper 
association with o, o\ o" y etc. ? This is the question of 
the possibility of any adaptation of movements to ends, 
whether voluntary or not. Its discussion is taken up 
later, 1 and in that connection the general principles are 
given by which this case may be solved with others. 

I need not go into the further questions of the pathology 
and abnormalities of handwriting, as this book is not writ- 
ten for purposes of exposition. The kinds and varieties of 
agraphia — inability to write, from nervous lesion — are 
well classified, on the basis of impairment of one or more 
of the elements involved, by Goldscheider, in the paper 
already quoted. His explanation of mirror- writing is, 

1 It is the fundamental fact of motor adjustment or ' Accommodation,' to 
which I give the name ' organic selection,' below, Chap. VII. 



The Origin of Handwriting. 99 

however, so clearly a proof of the adequacy of the points 
in which his theory and mine agree, that I may briefly 
explain it . 

Mirror- writing is the form of inscription which arises 
from tracing words with the left hand by an exact redupli- 
cation of the movements of the right hand, in a symmetri- 
cal way from the central point in front of the body, out 
toward the left. It produces a form of reversed writing 
which cannot be read until it is seen in a mirror. Many 
left-handed children tend to write in this way. Some 
adults, on taking a pen to write with the left hand, find 
they can write only in this way. Even those, like myself, 
to whom the movements seem, when thought of in visual 
terms, quite confusing and impossible, yet find, when they 
try to write with both hands together, in the air, from a 
central point right and left, that the left-hand mirror- 
writing movements are very natural and easy. Now, why 
is it ? 

If a man is of the so-called 'visual' type, i.e., if he 
depends mainly on his v series, recalling, in his writing, 
the look of the letters, etc., and by comparing it with the 
resulting writing, conforming his movement series to it, 
then any movements which violate the figure presented by 
visual memory are unintelligible. Such a man must re- 
produce, with his left hand, the visual images as produced 
by the right. That is, he must write from left to right 
with both hands, which involves symmetrical movements. 
This represents the power of the v series to bring the 
movements of both hands into conformity to it. If, on 
the contrary, his m series has grown independent by prac- 
tice, and he remembers written words not by the way 
they look mainly, but by the way it feels to write them. — 

fLofC. 



ioo Infants Movements. 

if he is of the so-called ' motor ' type in his handwriting — 
then his left-hand writing must reproduce the series of 
muscular senations, as his right-hand writing has estab- 
lished them. This represents the power of movements 
established by one hand to carry the other hand also 
with it in a symmetrical way. His left-hand position 
must duplicate at each moment his right-hand position, 
when he comes to try the experiment of writing in the air 
with both hands. This gives symmetrical movements, with 
the two hands, which means mirror-writing with the left 
hand. 1 

The following notice and criticism of Goldscheider's 
paper, revised slightly from my earlier review 2 of it, may 
serve to show the difference between my theory and his, 
and at the same time sum up the foregoing discussion. 

Goldscheider gives first a theoretical account of the 
origin of what I have called ' tracery imitation' under 
the equivalent phrase malende Reproduction, endeavouring 
to account for the association between visual pictures 
(letters, figures, etc.) and the hand movements necessary 
to reproduce them (as in drawing, writing, etc.). He 
finds three factors or ' moments ' in the rise of tracery 
imitation : 3 A, an optical picture of the hand movements 
required for making the required figure {optische Vorstel- 
lung der Handbewegung ; my o series), derived from the 
child's earlier sight of his own and others' hand move- 

1 This has been held by Fechner and others to be a strong proof that the 
discharge of energy into one side of the body tends to stimulate the corre- 
sponding members of the other side to similar movements (Mitbewegungeri). 
I have mentioned above (p. 65) that my experiments on the infant's use of 
its hands confirm this view. 

2 American Journ. of Psychology, V., 1893, 420-422. 

3 See p. 587 of the art. cited, where he gives a resume. 



The Origin of Handwriting, 101 

ments ; B, a series of new motor discharges strengthened 
by practice, felt as C, a series of sensations of actual 
movement, by which the discharges are regulated and 
controlled (motorisches Bewegungsbild ; my m series). 
Moment A is clearly seen in the fact often remarked, 
that in writing with the eyes closed we still follow the 
pen point in its inscription of an optical outline. Further, 
in moment A there are two factors : first, constant memo- 
ries (Bilder) from each position, and each amount and direc- 
tion of movement of the member (my m series); and 
second, optical presentations of the same positions and 
movements. Here we have, therefore, movements both 
felt and seen. Tracery imitation then consists in the fact 
that new movements are held, through the sensations they 
give, into conformity to the series established by being 
both felt and seen. 

This, it is at once seen, leaves out of account altogether 
the visual figure series (my v series) established altogether 
independently of hand movements. Goldscheider's theory 
is, therefore, in so far inadequate, for it assumes tracery 
imitation, i.e., it supposes that the hand has already gone 
over the figure to be imitated, giving moment A (requisite 
movements both felt and seen). But the question remains 
behind this : How were such series selected from other 
movements felt as well as seen ? How does the optical 
presentation of figure (optisches Bild des Gestaltes) get 
associated point by point with the twofold series (m series 
and o series) represented by Goldscheider's moment A ? 
Goldscheider does not take account of the fact that visual 
recognition of figure (letters, pictures, etc.) is definitely 
established long before the child is able or has any ten- 
dency to try to trace them, as has been shown above. He 



102 Infants Movements. 

is wrong, accordingly, in identifying the original optical 
figure series with the optical hand movement series. 

The question at issue then is : How does the purely 
visual figure series (v series) come to stimulate the two 
series which originate from the movement (m and o series). 
My observations show — to sum up the foregoing pages — 
that the process is as follows : As the child's experience 
widens, its optical perception of figure grows exact, so that 
certain retinal or eye movement series grow more and more 
fixed. At this period the arm and hand movement series, 
at first few and fixed, are broken up with the increasing 
mobility of the member. Consequently, (i) from the arm 
movement sensations those elements are emphasized which 
represent movements seen as well as felt, and (2) from the 
latter those are further emphasized which produce results 
identical with elements in certain definite figure series 
already established by the eye. This reproduction of vis- 
ual figure elements, by movements which are both seen 
and felt, establishes firmly the association between the 
movement sensations (m series) and the figure presenta- 
tions (v series), and the optical memories of the hand 
movements (0 series) tend to fall away. 

The validity of my analysis as opposed to that of Gold- 
scheider rests them upon the evidence that the child has 
a sense of figure established first by vision alone. Several 
points may be cited in support of this view : r. The child 
recognizes letters, pictures, etc., before it is able to trace 
them or speak their equivalents. 2. We can trace figures 
by movements of the head, foot, trunk, etc., — movements 
which we cannot see. If our sense of figure is indepen- 
dent of any particular thing that moves, it is easy to see 
how this is possible. If, on the contrary, the sense of 



The Origin of Handwriting. 103 

figure is derived entirely from movements both felt and 
seen, it is difficult to see how such accomplishments are 
to be accounted for. 3. In memories of actual writing, 
for example, my autograph, I, for one, picture clearly the 
way the letters look as they are left by the pen on the 
paper, and also the sensations of movement in the hand 
and arm : but hardly at all the way the hand or pen 
movements look at the successive stages of the signature. 

4. In the case of writing, a blind man has no series cor- 
responding to the look of the actual movements to those 
who see : he writes by the association between his move- 
ment sensations and the touch figure series which corre- 
sponds to the visual figure series of the man who sees. 1 

5. In another analogous case, the child's learning to 
speak, there are only two elements, the auditory series, in 
the case, we will say, of the gutturals, which infants some- 
times learn first, and the sound series which results from 
the child's own voice (omitting the movement sensations 
which are not in question) ; there is no hearing of the 
movements of speech in addition to the hearing of the 
sounds spoken, i.e., nothing at all corresponding to Gold- 
scheider's optical hand movement series, considered as dis- 
tinct from the resulting visual figure series. In hearing, 
accordingly, the auditory sound * copy ' series corresponds 
to my visual figure ' copy ' series. 

1 Cf. Broadbent's remarks on the writing of the blind, Brit. Med. Journ., 
1876, I., p. 435. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Suggestion. 
§ i. General Definition. 

The rise of hypnotism in late years has opened the way 
to an entirely new method of mental study. The doctrine 
of reflexes was before largely physiological, and only path- 
ological cases could be cited in evidence of a mechanism 
in certain forms of consciousness as well as out of it ; and 
even pathological cases of extreme sensitiveness to casual 
suggestion from the environment or from other men did 
not receive the interpretation which the phenomena of 
hypnotic suggestion are now making possible, i.e., that 
suggestion by idea, or through consciousness, must be 
recognized to be as fundamental a kind of motor stim- 
ulus as the direct excitation of a sense organ. Nervous 
reflexes may work directly through states of conscious- 
ness, or be stimulated by them ; these states of con- 
sciousness may be integral portions of such reflexes ; 
and, further, a large part of our mental life is made up of 
a mass of such ideo-motor 'suggestions,' which are nor- 
mally in a state of subconscious inhibition. 

Without discussing the nature of the hypnotic state in 
the first instance, nor venturing to pass judgment in this 
connection upon the question whether the suggestion 
theory is sufficient to explain all the facts, we may yet 

104 



General Definition, 105 

isolate the aspect spoken of above, and discuss its general 
bearings in the normal life, especially of children. Of 
course, the question at once occurs, is the normal life a 
life to any degree of ideo-motor or suggestive reactions, or 
is the hypnotic sleep in this aspect of it, quite an artificial 
thing ? Further, if such suggestion is normal or typical 
in the mental life, what is the nature of the inhibition by 
which it is ordinarily kept under — in other words, what is 
its relation to what we call will ? Leaving this second 
question altogether unanswered for the present, 1 it has 
occurred to me to observe children, especially my own 
H. and E., during their first two years, to see if light could 
be thrown upon the first inquiry above. If it be true that 
ideo-motor suggestion is a normal thing, then early child 
life should present the most striking analogies to the hyp- 
notic state in this essential respect. This is a field that 
has hitherto, as far as I know, been largely unexplored 
by workers in the psychology of suggestion. 

It is not necessary, I think, to discuss in detail the 
meaning of this much-abused but, in the main, very well- 
defined word, 'suggestion.' The general conception may 
be sufficiently well indicated for the present by the fol- 
lowing quotations from authorities. They all agree on the 
main phenomenon, their definitions differing in the place 
of emphasis, according as one aspect rather than another 
supplies ground for a theory. I may gather them up in 
my own definition, which aims to describe the fundamental 
fact apart from theory, and is therefore better suited to our 
preliminary exposition. I have myself defined suggestion 
as " from the side of consciousness . . . the tendency of 
a sensory or an ideal state to be followed by a motor 

1 See, however, Chap. XIII., below. 



106 Suggestion, 

state," 1 and it is "typified by the abrupt entrance from 
without into consciousness of an idea or image, or a 
vaguely conscious stimulation, which tends to bring about 
the muscular or volitional effects which ordinarily follow 
upon its presence." 2 

Janet defines suggestion as "a motor reaction brought 
about by language or perception." 3 This narrows the field 
to certain classes of stimulations, well defined in con- 
sciousness, and overlooks the more subtle suggestive in- 
fluences emphasized by the Nancy school of theorizers. 
Schmidkunz makes it : " die Herbeirufung eines Ereig- 
nisses durch die Erweckung seines psychischen Bildes." 4 
This again makes a mental picture of the suggested 
' event ' in consciousness necessary, and, besides, does not 
rule out ordinary complex associations. It neglects the 
requirement insisted upon by Janet, i.e., that the stimu- 
lus be from without, as from hearing words, seeing actions, 
objects, etc. Wundt says : " Suggestion ist Association 
mit gleichzeitiger Verengerung des Bewusstseins auf die 
durch die Association angeregten Vorstellungen." 5 In 
this definition Wundt meets the objection urged against 
the definition of suggestion in terms of complex associa- 
tion, by holding down the association to a ' narrowed con- 
sciousness;' but he, again, neglects the outward nature of 
the stimulus, and does not give an adequate account of 
how this narrowing of consciousness upon one or two 
associated terms, usually a sensori-motor association, is 

1 Science, Feb. 27, 1891, where many of the observations given in this 
chapter were first recorded. 

2 Handbook of Psychology, II., 297. 

3 Aut. Psych. , p. 218. 

4 Psych, der Suggestion. 

6 Hypnotismus u. Suggestion, II. Abs. 



General Definition, 107 

brought about. Ziehen : " In der Beibringung der Vor- 
stellung liegt das Wesen der Suggestion." 1 Here we have 
the sufficient recognition of the artificial and external 
source of the stimulation, but yet we surely cannot say 
that all such stimulations succeed in getting suggestive 
force. A thousand things suggested to us are rejected, 
scorned, laughed at. This is so marked a fact in current 
theory, especially on the pathological side, that I have 
found it convenient to use a special phrase for conscious- 
ness when in the purely suggestible condition, i.e., ' reac- 
tive consciousness.' 2 The phrase 'conscious reflex' is 
sometimes used, but is not good as applied to these sug- 
gestive reactions : for they are cortical in their brain seat, 
and are not as definite as ordinary reflexes. 

For my present purposes, the definition I have given 
from my earlier work is sufficient, since it emphasizes the 
movement side of suggestion. The fundamental fact about 
all suggestion, — not hypnotic suggestion alone, which 
some of the definitions which I have cited have exclusive 
reference to, 3 — is,-in my view, the removal of inhibitions to 
movement brought about by a certain condition of con- 
sciousness, which may be called 'suggestibility.' The fur- 
ther question, what makes consciousness suggestible, is 
open to some debate. There are two general statements, 
— not to elaborate a theory here however, — which are not 
done justice to by any of the earlier theories. We may 
say, first, that a suggestible consciousness is one in which 
the ordinary criteria of belief are in abeyance ; the coeffi- 

1 Philos. Monatshefte, XXIX., 1893, p. 489. 

2 Loc. cit. t pp. 60 ff., and Chap. XII. 

3 See the section below in this chapter (§ 7) in which the main facts of 
hypnosis are briefly stated, and the further references to the theory of hypnotism 
in § 3 of the chapter on Volition, below. 



1 08 -. Suggestion. 

cients of reality, to use the terms of my earlier discussion 
of belief, 1 are no longer apprehended. Consciousness 
finds all presentations of equal value, in terms of uncritical 
reality-feeling. It accordingly responds to them all, each 
in turn, readily and equally. Second : this state of things 
is due primarily to a violent reaction or fixation of atten- 
tion, resulting in its usual monoideism, or 'narrowing of 
consciousness.' For belief is a motor attitude resting 
upon complexity of presentation and representation. Just 
as soon as this mature complexity is destroyed, belief dis- 
appears, and all ideas 'become free and equal' in doing 
their executive work. Each presentation streams out in 
action by suggestion ; and stands itself fully in the pos- 
session of consciousness, with none of the pros and cons 
of its usual claim to be accepted as real, gaining also the 
still greater establishment which comes from the return 
wave upon itself of its own motor discharge. The ques- 
tion of suggestion becomes then that of the mechanism 
of attention in working three results : (1) the narrowing 
of consciousness upon the suggested idea, (2) the conse- 
quent narrowing of the motor impulses to simpler lines 
of discharge, and (3) the consequent inhibition of the dis- 
criminating and selective attitude which constitutes belief 
in reality. 

The truth of these general statements is thoroughly 
confirmed by the observation of children in whom the gen- 
eral system of adjustments, which constitute the 'worlds 
of reality ' of us adults, are not yet effected. Little chil- 
dren are credulous, in an unreflective sense, even to illusion. 
Tastes, colours, sensations generally, pains, pleasures, may 

1 Handbook, II, Chap. VII. 



Physiological Suggestion, 109 

be suggested to them, as is shown by the instances given 
in later pages. 

It is, however, to the truth of the fundamental fact of 
normal motor suggestion found in children, that I wish to 
devote a large part of this chapter; and observations of 
reactions clearly due to such suggestion, either under nat- 
ural conditions or by experiment, lead me to distinguish 
the following kinds of suggestion, mentioned in the follow- 
ing paragraphs, in what I find to be about the order of 
their appearance in child-life. 

§ 2. Physiological Suggestion. 

By ' suggestion ' is understood ordinarily ideal or ideo- 
motor suggestion, — the origination from without of a 
motor reaction, by producing in consciousness the state 
which is ordinarily antecedent to that reaction ; but obser- 
vation of an infant for the first month or six weeks of its 
life leads to the conviction that its life is mainly physiolog- 
ical. The vacancy of consciousness as regards anything 
not immediately given as sensation, principally pleasure 
and pain, precludes the possibility of ideal suggestion as 
such. The infant at this age has no ideas in the sense of 
distinct memory images. Its conscious states are largely 
affective. Accordingly, when the reactions which are 
purely reflex, and certain random impulsive movements, 
are excluded, we seem to exhaust the contents of its 
motor consciousness. 

Yet even at this remarkably early stage H. was found 
to be in a degree receptive of suggestion, — suggestion 
conveyed by repeated stimulation under uniform condi- 
tions. In the first place, the suggestions of sleep began 
to tell upon her before the end of the first month. Her 



no Suggestion, 

nurse put her to sleep by laying her face down and pat- 
ting gently upon the end of her spine. This position 
soon became itself not only suggestive to the child of 
sleep, but sometimes necessary to sleep, even when she 
was laid across the nurse's lap in what seemed to be an 
uncomfortable position. 

This case illustrates what I mean by physiological sug- 
gestion. It shows the law of physiological habit as it bor- 
ders on the conscious. No doubt some such effect would 
be produced by pure habit apart from consciousness ; but, 
consciousness being present, its nascent indefinite states 
may be supposed to have a quality of suggestiveness, 
which indicates the degree of fixedness of the habit. Yet 
the fact of such a colouring of consciousness in connection 
with the growth of physiological habit is important more 
as a transition to more evident suggestion. 

The same kind of phenomena appear also in adult life. 
Positions given to the limbs of a sleeper lead to movements 
ordinarily associated with these positions. The sleeper 
defends himself, withdraws himself from cold, etc. Chil- 
dren learn gradually the reactions upon conditions of posi- 
tion, lack of support, etc., of the body, necessary to keep 
from falling out of bed, which adults have so perfectly. 
All secondary automatic reactions may be classed here, 
the sensations coming from one reaction, as in walking, 
being suggestions to the next movement, unconsciously 
acted upon. The state of consciousness at any stage in 
the chain of movements, if present at all, must be similar 
to the baby's in the case above, — a mere internal glim- 
mering, whose reproduction, however brought about, re- 
enforces its appropriate reaction. 

The most we can say of such physiological suggestion 



Physiological Suggestion. 1 1 1 

is, that the conscious state is always present, and that the 
ordinary reflexes may be subsequently abbreviated and 
facilitated. 

Professor Ribot says as much as this. "When a physio- 
logical state has become a state of consciousness, through 
this very fact it has acquired a particular character. . . . 
It has become a new factor in the psychic life of the 
individual — a result that can serve as a starting-point to 
some new (either conscious or unconscious) work." And 
again : "Volition is a state of consciousness ... it marks 
a series, i.e., the possibility of being recommenced, modi- 
fied, prevented. Nothing similar exists in regard to auto- 
matic acts that are not accompanied by consciousness. . . . 
Each state of consciousness ... in relation to the future 
development of the individual, is a factor of the first 
order." * Schneider, also, writing from the phylogenetic 
point of view, says : "All purely physiological movements 
serve a single definite purpose, are always the same ; psy- 
chological movements, on the contrary, have the peculiar- 
ity that they serve different purposes, follow upon quite 
different stimulations, and adapt themselves to circum- 
stances by combination and modification. . . . Other- 
wise we would not have any consciousness, for there 
would be no use for it. . . . So in connection with every 
movement which is accompanied by a phenomenon of con- 
sciousness, we may hold, that this phenomenon of con- 
sciousness is really necessary {wirklich riothig ist) for the 
determination of the movement." 2 A more positive pro- 

1 Diseases of Personality, pp. 15-16. Ribot in his text, however, notes 
mainly the phylogenetic advantage of consciousness as memory, on which see 
below, Chap. IX., § 3, and Chap. X., §§ 2, 4. 

2 Der thierische Wille, p. 53. 



ii2 Suggestion. 

nouncement on the presence of consciousness in all reac- 
tions to which the term ' suggestion ' may be applied is that 
of Moll. He says : " There is no suggestion without con- 
sciousness. It' makes no difference whether the suggestion 
is made through imitation or by a command. ... I must 
insist in opposition to Mendel that there is consciousness 
of what is suggested, and that this is the main point in 
the matter. A suggestion without consciousness is to me 
inconceivable." 1 

In hypnotic experimentation, the influence of such sub- 
conscious or physiological suggestions is now generally 
recognized under the general doctrine of hyperesthesia 
of the senses. Ochorowicz calls the general phenomenon 
of suggestion ideoplasty? and when no clear idea is neces- 
sary to the effect as in my * physiological ' suggestion, he 
speaks of 'physical ideoplasty.' He says: "We have 
ideoplasty whenever the thought alone of any functional 
modification determines such functional modification . . . 
the thought of yawning itself produces yawning, etc." 8 

A particular observation made upon my child E. dur- 
ing her second year, may serve to make clear this first 
stage of suggestion. She learned to go to sleep sucking 
her bottle, the rubber of which was left in her mouth 
while she slept. Now, at any sound, touch, or other sud- 
den stimulation, such as the flaring up of the light, she 
began with more or less vigour to suck the bottle, giving 
no other .sign of awaking whatever, and really not awaking, 
but only passing from a deeper sleep, or less consciousness, 
to a lighter sleep, or more consciousness. Now, as I inter- 

1 Hypnotism, p. 267 (italics his). 

2 Ochorowicz, Mental Suggestion, p. 25. 
8 Ibid. 354-5. 



Physiological Suggestion. 113 

pret it, the stimulus, arousing more brain process, height- 
ened the sleep or dream consciousness, brought out the 
sensations in the lips about the rubber, and these sensa- 
tions by physiological suggestion set up the sucking move- 
ments. These movements in turn had their habitual in- 
fluence in sending the child off into deep sleep again. Then, 
later, it is probable that even the lip sensations were not 
necessary ; but the increased dynamogeny of the increased 
sensory consciousness simply poured itself into the lip- 
movement channels, since they were associated last and 
always with the conditions of sleep. 

Liebault was brought to recognize this phenomenon by 
the possibility of suggesting purely physical functions suc- 
cessfully to very young children. 1 

I have also a remarkable case of the suggestion of a 
function to report from the life of my child E. She, at a 
little over two years, was well trained to cleanly personal 
habits, always informing her nurse or mother of her needs. 
Her sister H. and she were about this time busy with the 
inventive games of childhood, in which H., the older, took 
the place of 'mama,' and the little one became her 'baby.' 
This play was carried consistently into the most minute 
and sustained details. Very soon the children's mother 
was astonished to find that E. was making use occasion- 
ally of certain hidden corners for a minor function, which 
she would announce by violent weeping after its perform- 
ance. It turned out that in the game of 'mama' and 
'baby,' 'mama' was accustomed to put 'baby' to sleep 

1 See the case of chronic constipation cured by suggestion by Liebault in 
a babe one year old, quoted by Ochorowicz, loc. cit., p. 247 (with his context). 
Certain facts in the habits of animals, such as the stopping of a dog at a tree 
because some other dog has stopped there, are analogous. 



H4 Suggestion. 

on sofa, floor, etc., but told her to perform the custom- 
ary physical functions before ' going to bed.' The child 
acted upon the suggestion in the way of docile obe- 
dience to her supposed 'mama.' And it was only after 
the act, that her sense of the true realities of her train- 
ing, and her proper personal relationships, broke in to 
destroy the semblance of reality which had made the 
suggestion so effective. 

We may adopt a diagrammatic representation of the ele- 
ments of a motor reaction at this point for convenience, 
calling it the * motor square.' Figure IX. presents a square 
of which each corner represents a physiological process, as 
it may occur with or without consciousness, as follows : — 

Let sg = suggestion (sensory process) ; mp = seat of 
motor process ; mt = movement of muscle ; mc — conscious- 





Fig. IX. — ' Motor Square.' Fig. X. — Physiological Suggestion. 

ness of movement (kinaesthetic process). The sides of the 
square are connections between the seats of these pro- 
cesses. The relation of the elements of the 'motor square' 
to other cerebral elements, and the relation of this scheme 
to others proposed by Lichtheim, Kussmaul, etc., are 
spoken of later. 1 

The stimulus sg (Fig. X., in which crosses at the corners 
indicate nervous processes only, and circles indicate vague 

1 Below, Chap. XIII., § 3. 



Sensori-motor Suggestion, 115 

states of consciousness) starts the motor process mp ; it 
leads to movement, mt, which is reported to conscious- 
ness, mc. The line between sg and mc is broken, because 
at this stage in infancy, associations are only just beginning 
to be formed between a feeling of muscular movement and 
its stimulating sensation. 

The cases of ' physiological suggestion,' as now de- 
scribed, tend, inasmuch as they involve elements of con- 
sciousness, to take more definite form, as ' sensori-motor 
suggestions,' to which we may now turn. 

§ 3. Sensori-motor Suggestion. 

These cases of suggestion may again be best illustrated 
from the phenomena of infancy, before a close definition is 
attempted. And first we may note some instances of what 
may be called general suggestions of this sort. 

I. General. — Various Sleep Suggestions. — From the first 
month on, there was a deepening of the hold upon the child 
H. of the early method of inducing sleep. The nurse, in 
the meantime, added two nursery rhymes. Thus position, 
pats, and rhyme sounds were the suggesting stimuli. 
Not until the third month, however, was there any dif- 
ference noticed, when the same suggestions came from 
other persons. I myself learned, during the fourth month, 
to put her to sleep, and learned with great difficulty, 
though pursuing the nurse's method as nearly as possi- 
ble. Here, therefore, was a sleep suggestion from the 
personality of the nurse, — her peculiar voice, touch, etc., — 
of which mention is made more fully below. At this time 
I assumed exclusive charge of putting H. to sleep, in order 
to observe the phenomena more closely. For a month or 



n6 Suggestion, 

six weeks I made regular improvement, reducing the time 
required from three-quarters of an hour to half an hour, 
finding it easier at night than at midday. This indicated 
that darkness had already become an additional sleep sug- 
gestion, probably because it shut out the whole class of 
sensations from sight, thus reducing the attention to 
stimulations which were monotonous. 1 

In the following month (sixth), I reduced the time 
required, day or night, to about a quarter of an hour, on 
an average. In this way I found it possible to send her 
off to sleep at any hour of the night that she might wake 
and cry out. 

I then determined to omit the patting, and endeavour to 
bring on sleep by singing only. The time was at first 
lengthened, then greatly shortened. I now found it pos- 
sible (sixth to seventh month) to put her to sleep, when 
she waked in the dark, by a simple refrain repeated 
monotonously two or three times. In the meantime she 
was developing active attention, and resisted all endeavours 
of her nurse and mother, who had been separated from 
her through illness, very stubbornly for hours, while she 
would go to sleep for myself, even when most restless, 
in from fifteen to thirty minutes. This result required 
sometimes firm holding down of the infant and a deter- 
mined expression of countenance. 

At the end of the year, this treatment being regular, 
she would voluntarily throw herself in the old position 
at a single word from me, and go to sleep, if only patted 

1 I found by accident, in this connection, the curious fact that a single flash 
of bright light would often put H. immediately to sleep when all other pro- 
cesses were futile. In her fifth month I despaired one evening, after nearly an 
hour's vain effort, and lighted the gas at a brilliant flash unintentionally. She 
closed her eyes by the usual reflex, and 'did not open them again, sleeping 



Sens ori-mo tor Suggestion. 117 

uniformly, in from four to ten minutes. This continued 
through the second year; even when she was so restless 
that her nurse was unable to keep her from gaining her 
feet, and when she screamed if forced by her to lie down. 
The sight of myself was sufficient to make her quiet ; and 
in five minutes, rarely more, she was sound asleep. I 
found it of service, when she was teething and in pain, 
to be able thus to give her quiet, healthful sleep. 

This illustrates, I think, as conclusively as could be 
desired, the passage of purely physiological over into 
sensory suggestion ; and this is all that I care, in this 
connection, to emphasize. 

Food and Clothing Suggestion. — H. gave unmistak- 
able signs of response to the sight of her food-bottle as 
early, at least, as the fourth month, probably a fortnight 
earlier. The reactions were a kind of general movement 
toward the bottle, especially with the hands, a brightening 
of the face, and crowing sounds. It is curious that the 
rubber on the bottle seemed to be the point of identifica- 
tion, the bottle being generally not responded to when 
the rubber was removed. This was also true of E., to 
whom the rubber alone without the bottle became a 
remarkable quieting agent, as I have already mentioned. 
The sight of the bottle, also, was suggestive much earlier 
than the touch of it with her hands. 

H. began to show a vague sense of the use of her 
articles of clothing about the fifth month, responding at 
the proper time, when being clothed, by ducking her head, 

soundly and long. I afterwards resorted to this method on several occasions, 
carefully shielding her eyes from the direct light rays, and it generally, but 
not always, succeeded. Shortly after noticing this in the columns of Science 
(Feb. 27, 1 891), I heard from a prominent psychologist that his wife could 
confirm the observation from experience with her own children. 



n8 Suggestion. 

extending her hand or withdrawing it. About this time 
she also showed signs of joy at the appearance of her 
mittens, hood, and cloak, before going out. 

II. Suggestions of Personality. — It was a poet, no 
doubt, who first informed us that the infant inherits a 
peculiar sensibility for its mother's face, — a readiness 
to answer it with a smile. This is all poetic fancy. It is 
true that the infant does smile very early ; E. clearly 
smiled at me on her seventh day and at her mother 
on the ninth. But it is probably a purely reflex indica- 
tion of agreeable organic sensation. When the child does 
begin to show partiality for mother or nurse, it is because 
the kind treatment it has already experienced in connec- 
tion with the face has already brought out the same smile 
before in this organic way; the mothers face, that is, 
grows to suggest the smile. At first it is not the face 
alone, but the personality, the presence, to which the child 
responds ; and of more special suggestion, the voice is 
first effectual, then touch, as in the case of sleep above, and 
then sight. Such suggestions are among the most impor- 
tant of infancy, serving as elements in the growth of the 
consciousness of self and of external reality, as we shall 
have occasion to see later on. 

Delaying for the moment the further analysis of this 
remarkable class of suggestions, the question occurs, are 
not these so-called ' suggestions ' simply cases of the asso- 
ciation of ideas ? I think we are warranted in answering, 
' No ' ; for the reason that it is not an associated idea that 
is brought up ; unless we are prepared to enlarge the ordi- 
nary conception of association to include phenomena of 
the vaguest psychological meaning. The muscular move- 
ment is produced without the production of an idea of 



Sensori-motor Suggestion. 119 

that movement, largely through native pathways of dis- 
charge, or by the production of organic conditions, such 
as sleep, which involve muscular conditions. Can we say 
that the sleep suggestions first bring up an idea or image 
of the sleep condition, or that the bottle brings up an 
idea of the movements of grasping, or even of the sweet 
taste ? I think the case is more direct. The energy of 
stimulation passes over into the motor reaction through 
the medium of the conscious state ; although the con- 
scious state is undoubtedly enveloped in an envelope or 
fringe of organic and muscular sensation which is of 
marked hedonic quality. Further, as will appear clearer 
below, it is not an association plus a suggestion, or an 
association plus an association, as current atomistic doc- 
trines of association would lead us to expect. We cannot 
say that pleasure or pain always intervenes between the 
present state of consciousness and the motor reaction, 
i.e., mother's face, pleasure recalled, expression of pleasure, 
or present bottle, sweet taste, movements to reach. I 
believe all this is quite artificial and unnatural. The most 
that can be said is that the conscious state as a whole, 
with its hedonic colouring, serves to bring about a modi- 
fication of the reaction, whether it be a native one, or one 
established by association or habit. 1 

The elements are as before for physiological suggestion, 
except that the reaction begins with a clearly conscious 
process at sg (Fig. XL), and the child is getting associa- 
tions between sg and mc. 

The phenomenon of ' personality-suggestion,' to which 
we may now return, is so important in the growth of the 

1 Ochorowicz describes the same class of phenomena as ' ideorganic 
associations based on habitude,' Mental Suggestion, p. 232. 



1 20 Suggestion, 

child's consciousness of himself, of his belief in realities 
about him, and of his social life, that it should be closely 
scrutinized. This is the more important because such an 
analysis has never been made upon the basis of actual ob- 
servation of children. The treatment which follows is 




Fig. XI.— Sensori-motor Suggestion. 

based upon most detailed and watchful inspection of H. 
and E., together with careful but less intimate observation 
of two other young children, one of them a boy, with es- 
pecial reference to the development of the sense of their 
own relation to the persons who moved about them. 1 

As outcome of this kind of observation, and with no 
intermixture of interpretation, which may be now left over, 
I find no less than four phases of attitude involved in what 
afterwards becomes the so-called ' social sense ' in the child. 
I say * afterwards becomes,' because all of them belong in 
the 'projective' 2 stage of the child's sense of self, i.e., they 
all go to furnish data which he afterwards appropriates to 
himself as 'subject.' These four phases are indescribably 
subtle and indescribably intermixed in the subjective en- 
semble of the growing child. So much so that I shall not 
attempt in all cases to cite actual situations to justify 

1 Some observations on the presence of something similar to this class of 
suggestions in animals have already been given above, p. 19; see also p. 126. 

2 See above, p. 18 f. 



Sensori-motor Suggestion. 121 

each point : rather, the view I take rests upon innumerable 
situations, and their differences from one another. Just 
as one is utterly unable to give examples of his own 
phases of attitude expressive of the nuances of meaning 
which the actions of others bring out of him, so, entirely 
a matter of insight and intuition must his sense be of 
what is in the child's mind in the various social situations 
which confront him from day to day. Nevertheless, the 
drift of the infant's development is very clear to the sym- 
pathetic observer ; and I think the instances which I cite 
will be sufficient to excite in all those familiar with little 
children a sense of the truth of the general portrayal. 

1. The first thing in the environment of the infant 
which it notes — apart from the ordinary fixed and static 
stimulations, such as sounds, lights, etc. — are movements. 
The first attempts of the infant at anything like steady 
attention are directed to moving things — a swaying cur- 
tain, a moving light, a stroking touch, etc. And further 
than this, the moving things soon become more than 
objects of curiosity; these things are just the things that 
affect him for pleasure or pain. It is movement that 
brings him his food, movement that regulates the stages 
of his bath, movement that dresses him comfortably, 
movement that sings to him and rocks him to sleep. In 
that complex of sensations, the .nurse, the feature of 
moment to him, of immediate satisfaction, or redemption 
from pain, is this : movements come to succour him. 
Change in his bodily feeling is the vital requirement of 
his life, for by it the rhythm of his vegetative existence is 
secured ; and these changes are accompanied and secured 
always in the moving presence of the one he sees and 
feels about him. This, I take it, is the first and great 



122 Suggestion. 

association of the infant with other persons, the earliest 
reflection in his consciousness of the world of personali- 
ties about him. At this stage his ' personality-suggestion ' 
is this pain-movement-pleasure psychosis : to this he re- 
acts with a smile, and a crow, and a kick. 1 

Many facts tend to bear me out in this position. My 
child cried when I handled her in the dark, although I 
imitated the nurse's movements as closely as possible. 
She tolerated a strange presence as long as it remained 
quietly in its place : but let it move, and especially let it 
usurp any of the pieces of movement-business of the nurse 
or mother, and her protests were emphatic. The move- 
ments tended to bring the strange elements of a new face 
into the vital association, pain-movement-pleasure, and so 
to disturb its familiar course : this constituted it a strange 
'personality.' 

It is astonishing, also, what new accidental elements 
may become parts of this association. Part of a move- 
ment, a gesture, a peculiar habit of the nurse, may become 
sufficient to give assurance of the welcome presence and 
the pleasures which the presence brings. Two notes of 
my song in the night stood for my presence to H., and no 
song from any one else could replace it. A lighted match 
stopped the crying of E. for food, 2 although it was but a 
signal for a process ,of food-preparation lasting several 
minutes : and a simple light never stopped her crying 
under any other circumstances. So with this first start 
in the sense of personality we find also reasons for the 

1 Undoubtedly this association gets some of its value from the other similar 
one in which the movements are the infant's own. It is by movement that 
he gets rid of pain and secures pleasure. 

2 Observations made in her fourteenth week. 



Sensori-motor Suggestion. 123 

differences of different personalities ; but this constitutes 
the next phase. 

2. It is evident that the sense of another's presence 
thus felt in the infant's consciousness rests, as all associa- 
tions rest, upon regularity or repetition : his sense of 
expectancy is aroused whenever the chain of events is 
started. And this is embodied at this stage largely in 
two indications : the face and the voice. 1 But it is easy 
to see that this is a very meagre sense of personality ; a 
moving machine which brought pain and alleviated suffer- 
ing would serve as well. So the child begins to learn in 
addition the fact that persons are in a measure individ- 
ual in their treatment of him, and hence that personality 
has elements of uncertainty or irregularity about it. This 
growing sense is very clear to one who watches an infant 
in its second half-year. Sometimes its mother gives a 
biscuit, but sometimes she does not. Sometimes the 
father smiles and tosses the child; sometimes he does 
not. And the child looks for signs of these varying 
moods and methods of treatment. Its new pains of dis- 
appointment arise directly on the basis of that former 
sense of regular personal presence upon which its expec- 
tancy went forth. 

This new element of the child's 'social sense' becomes, 
at one period of its development, quite the controlling ele- 
ment. Its action in the presence of the persons of the 
household becomes hesitating and watchful. Especially 
does it watch the face for any expressive indications of 

1 I have special observations on H.'s responses to changes in facial expres- 
sion up to the age of twenty months. Her changes of attitude indicated most 
subtle sensibility to these differences — and normal children all do, I think. 
Animals show the same remarkable ' projective intuition/ if the expression be 
allowed. 



124 Suggestion, 

what treatment is to be expected ; for facial expression is 
now the most regular as well as the most delicate indica- 
tion. It is unable to anticipate the treatment in detail, 
and it has not of course learned any principles of interpre- 
tation of the conduct of mother or father lying deeper 
than the details. It is just here, I think, that imitation 
arises, as I shall show later, 1 and becomes so important 
in the child's life. This is imitation's opportunity. The 
infant waits to see how others act, because its own weal 
and woe depends upon this * how ' ; and inasmuch as it 
knows not what to anticipate, its mind is open to every 
suggestion of movement. Its attention dwells upon de- 
tails, and by the regular principle of motor reaction which 
imitation expresses, it acts these suggestions out. 

All through the child's second year, and longer, his 
sense of the persons around him is in this stage. The 
incessant ' why ? ' with which he greets any action affect- 
ing him, or any information given him, is witness to the 
simple puzzle of the apparent capriciousness of persons. 
Of course he cannot understand * why ' : so the simple 
fact to him is that mama will or won't, he knows not 
beforehand which. 

But in all this period there is germinating in his con- 
sciousness — and this very uncertainty is an important 
element of it — the seed of a far-reaching thought. His 
sense of persons — moving, pleasure-or-pain-giving, uncer- 
tain but self-directing, persons — is now to become a sense 
of agency, of power, which is yet not the power of the 
regular-moving door on its hinges or the rhythmic swing- 
ing of the pendulum of the clock. The sense of personal 
actuation, ' projective agency,' is now forming, and it again 

1 Below, Chap. XI., § 3. 



Sensori-motor Suggestion. 125 

is potent for still further development of the social con- 
sciousness. For he begins to grow capricious himself, and 
to feel that he can be so whenever he likes. Suggestion 
begins to lose the regularity of its working ; or to become 
negative and ' contrary ' in its effects. At this period 
it is that obedience begins to grow hard, and its mean- 
ing begins to dawn upon the child as the great reality. 
It means the subjection of his own agency, his own liberty 
to be capricious, to the agency and liberty of some one 
else. 

3. With all this, the child's distinction between and among 
the persons who constantly come into contact with him 
grows on apace, in spite of the element of irregularity of the 
general fact of personality. As before he learned the dif- 
ference between one presence and another, — a difference 
which was overcome in the discovery that every presence 
is of irregular value; so now he learns the difference 
between one character and another — the regularity of 
personal agency, as opposed to the regularity of mere asso- 
ciations of movement and to the irregularity of the ap- 
parently capricious. Every character is more or less 
regular in its irregularity. It has its tastes and modes 
of action, its temperament and type of command. This 
the child learns late in the second year and thereafter. 
He behaves differently when the father is in the room. 
He is quick to obey one person, slow to obey another. He 
cries aloud, pulls his companions, and behaves reprehen- 
sibly generally, when no adult is present but his nurse, 
who has no authority to punish him. This stage in his 
* knowledge of man ' leads to those active differences of 
conduct on his part which make imitation, and the dis- 
cipline of obedience, a sword with two edges, one for good 



126 Suggestion. 

and one for evil. This general appreciation of character 
together with the full-blown social feeling, which consti- 
tutes the fourth phase in my division, may be left for 
later discussion, as well as the part played by this kind of 
suggestion in the genesis of the moral sense. 1 

To sum up : * personality-suggestion' is the general term 
for the stimulations to activity which the child gets from 
persons. It develops through three or four roughly dis- 
tinguished 'stages,' all of which illustrate what I have 
called his 'projective' sense of personality; namely, i. a 
bare distinction, on the ground of peculiar pain-movement- 
pleasure complexes, of persons from things ; 2. a sense of 
the irregularity or capriciousness of the behaviour of these 
persons, which is the germ of his sense of agency ', as op- 
posed to the regular causal series of conditions which 
things go through ; 3. his distinction, vaguely felt but re- 
acted to with great exactness, between the characteristic 
modes of behaviour or personal character of different per- 
sons ; 4. after his sense of his own subject-agency arises 
by a process of imitation, he gets what is really social-feel- 
ing: the sense of others as 'ejective,' that is, as like and 
equal to himself. 2 

III. Deliberative Suggestion. — By 'deliberative sugges- 
tion ' I mean a state of mind in which co-ordinate sense- 

1 Below, Chap. XI., § 3. 

2 The reader may notice in this connection the section below on * bashful- 
ness,' which is found to be a native organic response to the presence of per- 
sons, considered as 'projects' of a personal kind. It is curious to note that, 
besides general gregariousness which many animals show in common, they 
have in many instances special sense indications of the presence of creatures of 
their own kind or of other kinds. Dogs and cats each recognize both dogs and 
cats by smell. Horses seem to be guided by sight. Fowls are notoriously 
blind to shapes of fowls, but depend on the cries which they hear of their kind 
or their young. 



Sensori-motor Suggestion. 127 

stimuli meet, confront, oppose, further, one another. Yet 
I do not mean ' deliberation ' in the full-blown volitional 
sense, but suggestion that appears deliberative, while still 
inside the reactive consciousness and still representing a 
single reaction upon a single state of consciousness. In 
real deliberation, as appears below, there are two or more 
pictured alternatives, upon the conscious co-ordination of 
which action follows. But here the different elements are 
ingredients in a single sensory complex, — one suggestion, 
— and the motor reaction waits upon the issue of the 
whole. The competition of processes is probably in large 
measure subcortical. So the state is still to be classed as 
sensori-motor, not ideo-motor, since it does not require 
intelligent memory and representation. The last three 
months of the child's first year are, I think, clearly 
given over to this kind of consciousness. Motor stimula- 
tions have multiplied, the emotional life is budding forth 
in a variety of promising traits, the material of conscious 
character is present; but the 'ribs' of mental structure 
may still be seen through, response answering to appeal 
in a complex but yet mechanical way. The child lacks 
self-consciousness, self-decision, self in any form. 

As an illustration of what I mean, I may record the fol- 
lowing case of deliberative suggestion from H.'s thirteenth 
month : it was more instructive to me than whole books 
would be on the theory of the conflict of impulses. When 
about eight months old, H. formed the peculiar habit of 
suddenly scratching the face of her nurse or mother with 
her nails. It became fixed in her memory, probably be- 
cause of the unusual facial expression of pain, reproof, etc., 
which followed it, until the close proximity of any one's 
face was sufficient suggestion to her to give it a violent 



128 Suggestion. 

scratch. In order to break up this habit, I began to 
punish her by taking at once the hand with which she 
scratched and 'snapping' her fingers with my own first 
finger hard enough to be painful. For about four weeks 
this seemed to have no effect, probably because I only saw 
her a small part of the time, and only then did she suffer 
the punishment. But I then observed, and those who 
were with her most reported, that she only scratched once 
at a time, and grew very solemn and quiet for some mo- 
ments afterwards, as if thinking deeply ; and soon after 
this climax was reached she would scratch once impul- 
sively, be punished, and weep profusely, then become as 
grave as a deacon, looking me in the face. I would then 
deliberately put my cheek very close to her, and she would 
sit gazing at it in 'deep thought' for two or even three 
minutes, hardly moving a muscle the whole time, and then 
either suddenly scratch my face and be punished again, or 
turn to something (noise, object, watch-chain, etc.) which I 
was careful enough to provide in order to aid her by drawing 
off the attention. Having scratched, she began to cry, in 
anticipation of the punishment. Gradually the scratching 
became more rare. She seldom yielded to the temptation 
after being punished, and so the habit entirely disappeared. 
I may add that her mother and myself endeavoured to 
induce a different reaction by taking the child's other hand 
and gently stroking the face which she had scratched. 
This movement in time replaced the other completely, and 
the soft stroking became one of her most spontaneous 
expressions of affection. 

Now the first act of scratching was probably accidental, 
one of the spontaneous reactions or physiological sugges- 
tions so common with an infant's hands ; it passed, by 



Sensori-motor Suggestion. 129 

reason of its peculiar associations, into a sensori-motor 
reaction whenever the presence of a face acted as sugges- 
tion, — so far a strong direct stimulus to the motor centres. 
Then came the pain, — a stimulus to the inhibition of the 
foregoing, not by exciting a clear memory, on the next 
occasion, but by working itself directly into the suggesting 
psychosis, and thus reducing the motor tendency. For 
a time the tendency remained strong enough, however, 
to cause the reaction ; then there followed an apparent 
balance between the two, and finally the pain element 
predominated in the suggestion, and the reaction was per- 
manently inhibited. The stroking reaction gained all the 
strength of violent and intense association with the ele- 
ments of this mental conflict, and was thus soon fixed and 
permanent. 

Taking this as a typical case of 'deliberative suggestion,' 
— and I could instance many others from H.'s life history 
and from E.'s, — two inferences may be brought out in 
passing : there is nothing here that requires volition, mean- 
ing by ' volition ' a new influence of any kind, — active con- 
ciousness ; if we do call it so, we simply apply a different 
term to phenomena which in their simplicity we call by 
other names. And, second, suggestion is as original a 
motor stimulus as pleasure and pain. Here they are in 
direct conflict. Can we say that H. balanced the pleasure 
of scratching and the pain of punishment, and decided 
the case on this egoistic basis ? What pleasure did the 
scratching have more than any other muscular exercise ? 
It was simply a sensori-motor habit which the pain inhibi- 
tion tended to break up. 

So also, apart from pathological aboulia, which is de- 
scribed later on, we find a corresponding condition in 

K 



1 30 Suggestion. 

adult life. As I have said elsewhere, " there is a state 
of conflict and hindrance among presentations which is 
mechanical in its issue, ... so states of vexation, divided 
counsel, conflicting impulse, and hasty decision against 
one's desire for deliberate choice. We often find our- 
selves drawn violently apart, precipitated through a whirl 
of suggested courses into a course which we feel unwilling 
to acknowledge as our own." 1 The conditions of delibera- 
tion are there, but without the fact of it. 

§ 4. Ideo-motor Suggestion. 

By ideo-motor suggestion I mean the condition in which 
the stimulus is a clearly pictured idea, a presentation or 
object with all its 'meaning,' or a revived image of memory 
or imagination. 

Imitation? — For a long period after the child has 
learned to use all his senses, and after his memory is 
well developed, he lacks conscious imitation entirely. I 
have been quite unable with my children to confirm the 
results of Preyer, who attributes imitation to his child at 
the age of three to four months. 

In support of the assertion that imitation is rather late 
in its rise, the following experiences may be reported. 
As a necessary caution, the rule was made that no single 
performance should be considered real imitation unless it 
could be brought out again under similar circumstances. 
This rule is necessary, I think, merely for caution, since 

1 Handbook, II., p. 299. This kind of complex suggestion, however, un- 
doubtedly serves to give a ready organic basis for the earlier and more obscure 
acts of volition, which are described later on (Chap. XIII. § 4). 

2 In this chapter the word ' imitation ' is used to denote ' conscious ' imita- 
tion — its usual popular sense — in distinction from the phylogenetic sense in 
which it is used in Chap. IX. below. 



Ideo-motor Suggestion. 131 

the 'copy' set for imitation is likely to be some simple 
movement of lips, hands, etc., which the child has made 
himself before, and is likely to make again. It is possible 
also from the mere fact of dynamogeny that the motor 
discharge in shedding itself outward would tend in a gen- 
eral way to find its most permeable native pathway toward 
the muscles which repeat the copy, since the movements 
are natural and easy. At any rate, such cases, if they 
exist, shade up gradually into conscious imitations. 1 

It is probable, therefore, that cases of imitation recorded 
as happening as early as the third month are merely coinci- 
dences. For example, I recorded an apparent imitation by 
H., of closing the hand, as late as May 22 (beginning of the 
ninth month), but afterwards I wrote, " experiment not con- 
firmed with repeated trials running through four succeed- 
ing days." H.'s first clear imitation was on May 24, in 
knocking a bunch of keys against a vase, as she saw me 
do it, in order to produce the bell-like sound. This she 
repeated over and over again, and tried to reproduce it a 
week later, when, from lapse of time, she had partly for- 
gotten how to use the keys. But on the same day, May 
24, other efforts to bring out imitation failed signally, i.e., 
with more or less articulate sounds, movements of the lips 
(Preyer's experiments), and opening and closing of the 
hands. Ten days later, however, she imitated closing 
the hand on three different occasions. And a week 
afterward she imitated movements of the lips and certain 
sounds, as pa, ma, etc. 2 From this time forward the phe- 

1 See the remarks on the question of ' instinctive imitation,' below, Chap. 
XIII., § 3. 

2 The majority of recorded observations agree in making vocal imitations 
later than visual-movement imitations. Egger, loc. cit. f p. 8; Tracy, Psychology 
of Childhood, p. 57 (for citations); Stevenson, Science, March 3, 1893. The 



132 Suggestion, 

nomenon seemed extended to a very wide range of activi- 
ties, and began to assume the immense importance which 
it always comes to have in the life of the young child. 

When the imitative impulse does come, it comes in 
earnest. For many months after its rise it may be called, 
perhaps, the controlling impulse, apart from the ordinary 
life processes. As a phenomenon, it is too familiar to need 
description. Its importance in the growth of the child's 
mind is largely in connection with the development of 
language and of voluntary movement generally. 

The phenomena may be divided into two general classes, 
called simple imitation and persistent imitation} By ' sim- 
ple imitations,' reactions are characterized, in which the 
movement does not really imitate, but is the best the child 
can do. He does not try to improve by making a second 
attempt. This is evidently a case of simple sensori-motor 
suggestion, and is peculiar psychologically only because of 
the more or less remote approximation the reaction has to 
the movement which the child copies. 

The reaction at which imitative suggestion aims is one 
which will reproduce the stimulating impression, and so 
tend to perpetuate itself. When a child strikes the com- 
bination required, he is never tired working it. H. found 
endless delight in putting the rubber on a pencil and off 
again, each act being a new stimulus to the eye. This is 

first vocal imitation of my other child, E., was observed in her eleventh month, 
when she tried to say ' tick,' in reference to the clock, after her mother, to- 
gether with ( ps ' for ' pussy,' and ( po ' for ' pop.' 

1 Preyer's distinction between ' spontaneous ' and ' deliberate ' imitations 
{Senses and Will, p. 293). He is wrong in making both classes voluntary. 
The contrary is proved for spontaneous imitation by the fact that many ele- 
ments of facial expression are never acquired by blind children. We could 
hardly say that facial expression was a voluntary acquisition, however gradually 
it may have been acquired. 



Ideo-motor Suggestion, 133 

specially noticeable in children's early efforts at speech. 
They react all wrong when they first attack a new word, 
but gradually get it moderately well, and then sound it 
over and over in endless monotony. The essential thing, 
then, in imitation, over and above simple ideo-motor sug- 
gestion, is that the stimulus starts a motor process which 
tends to reproduce the stimulus and, through it, the motor 
process again. From the physiological side we have a 
circular activity — sensor, motor ; sensor, motor : and 
from the psychological side we have a similar circle, 
— reality, image, movement; reality, image, movement, 
etc. 

The square to the left (Fig. XII.) is the first act of imita- 
tion ; the movement (mt) now stimulates (dotted line a) 




Fig. XII. — Imitation. 

the eye again (sg 1 ), giving the second square, which by its 
movement (mt') furnishes yet another stimulus (dotted 
line a') ; and so on. 

By ' persistent imitation ' is meant the child's effort, by 
repetition, to improve his imitations. Its extreme impor- 
tance justifies its separate discussion in a later place. 1 

Summing up the ground which we have gone over so far 

1 Chapter XIII. The general discussion of the position of imitation in the 
mental life, especially its phylogenetic value, is reserved for later chapters 
(Chaps. IX.-XIIL). 



1 34 Suggestion, 

in this chapter, the progress of suggestion may be seen 
by the following brief definitions : — 

i. Physiological suggestion is the tendency of a reflex 
or secondary automatic process to get itself associated with 
and influenced by stimulating processes of a physiological 
and vaguely sensory sort. Perhaps the plainest case of it, 
on a large scale in animal life, is seen in the decay of 
instincts when no longer suited to the creature's needs 
and environment. 

2. Sensori-motor and Ideo-motor suggestion is the ten- 
dency of all nervous reactions to adapt themselves to new 
stimulations, both sensory and ideal, in such a way as to 
be more ready for the repetition or continuance of these 
stimulations. 

3. Deliberative suggestion is the tendency of different 
competing sensory processes to merge in a single conscious 
state with a single motor reaction, illustrating the princi- 
ples of nervous summation and arrest. 

4. Imitative suggestion is the tendency of a sensory or 
ideal process to maintain itself by such an adaptation of 
its discharges that they reinstate in turn new stimulations 
of the same kind. 

Whether any simpler formulation of these partial state- 
ments may be reached, is a question which may be delayed 
until we have looked more closely at certain other instances 
of suggestion, which have not been described before, and 
at the conditions of nervous adaptation in general. 1 

1 See Chap. VII. on 'The Theory of Development,' and Chap. IX. on 
1 Organic Imitation.' 



Subconscious Adult Suggestion. 135 

§ 5. Subconscious Adult Suggestion. 

There are certain phenomena of a rather striking kind 
coming under this head whose classification is so evident 
that discussion of the general psychological principles 
which they involve is not necessary. The kind of fact 
^vhich I have in view may be illustrated with sufficient 
clearness merely by the recital of the following observa- 
t ons, which are in themselves new. 

Tune-suggestion. — Professor Ladd has pointed out in 
detail — what has for a long time been taken for granted 
— that dream states are largely indebted for their visual 
e.ements, what we see in our dreams, to accidental lines, 
pitches, etc., in the field of vision, when the eyes are shut, 
die to the distended blood vessels of the cornea and lids, 
tc changes in the external illumination, to the presence of 
dist particles of different configuration, etc. 1 The other 
senses also undoubtedly contribute to the texture of our 
dieams by equally subconscious suggestions. And there 
is no doubt, further, that our waking life is constantly in- 
flienced by equally trivial stimulations. 

I have tested in detail, for example, the conditions of 
tm rise of so-called ' internal tunes ' — we speak of 
' tines in our heads ' or 'in our ears ' — and find certain 
suggestive influences which in most cases cause these 
tures to rise and take their course. Often, when a tune 
sprngs up 'in my head,' the same tune has been lately sung 
or vhistled in my hearing, though quite unconsciously to 
my elf. Often the tunes are those heard in church the 
previous day or earlier. Such a tune I am entirely unable 

1 .add, 'Psychology of Visual Dreams,' in Mind, N. S., Vol. I. (1892), 
p. 29. 



1 36 Suggestion. 

to recall voluntarily : yet when it comes into my mind's 
ear, so to speak, I readily recognize it as belonging 
to an earlier day's experience. Other cases show various 
accidental suggestions, such as the tune ' Mozart ' sug- 
gested by the composer's name, the tune ' Gentle Annie ' 
suggested by the name Annie, etc. In all these cases it is 
only after the tune has taken possession of consciousness, 
and after much seeking, that the suggesting influence is 
discovered. 

Closer analysis reveals the following facts. The ' time ' 
of such internal tunes is usually dictated by some rhyth- 
mical subconscious occurrence. After hearty meals it is 
always the time of the heart-beat, unless there be ' in tie 
air ' some more impressive stimulus ; as, for exampfe, 
when on ship-board, the beat is with me invariably that )f 
the engine throbs. When walking it is the rhythm of tie 
foot-fall. On one occasion a knock of four beats on tie 
door started the Marseillaise in my ear : following up tKs 
clue, I found that at any time, different divisions of musi- 
cal time being struck on the table at will by another per- 
son, tunes would spring up and run on, getting their cie 
from the measures suggested. Further, when a tune des 
away, its last notes often suggest, some time after, anotler 
having a similar movement — just as we pass from cjie 
tune to another in a * medley.' It may also be noted tlat 
in my case the tune memories are auditive : they run in 
my head when I have no words for them and have never 
sung them — ■ an experience which is consistent with the 
fact that these ' internal tunes ' arise in childhood beore 
the faculty of speech. They also have distinct pich. 
For example, on April 9, 1892, I found a tune 'in my 
head ' which was perfectly familiar, but for which I ould 



Subconscious Adult Suggestion, 137 

find no words. Tested on the piano, the pitch was f-sharp 
and the time was my heart-beat. I finally, after much 
effort, got the unworthy words, * Wait till the clouds roll 
by/ by humming the tune over repeatedly. The pitch is 
determined, probably, by the accidental condition of the 
auditory centre as respects pitch-readiness, or by the pitch- 
colouring of the external sound which serves as stimulus 
to the tune. 

Dreams as Emotion Stimulus. — Another important 
realm of suggestion hitherto overlooked is seen in the 
influence of dreams on the waking life. Dreams react to 
deepen waking impressions, ana" to strengthen the hold of 
dominant presentations and impulses. This fact seems to 
have its primary application to emotion. We cannot tell 
how much of the active momentum of our waking life we 
owe to dream stimulation. The following case of fact, in 
the life of my little girl H., indicates that such a stimulus 
may be of enormous importance. When two years and 
three months of age, she was accidentally run over by a 
dog. Before this she had been very fond of dogs. She 
was not much hurt, but very much frightened, and re- 
peated to every one the words, 'Doggie run over baby.' 
The next day she saw a dog on the street and showed 
some signs of fear until the brute ran away. About the 
second night after the occurrence her mother and I were 
awakened by a violent outcry in H.'s room. On going in, 
the child was found sitting in bed undergoing a paroxysm 
of fear from a bad dream. She repeated again and again 
after leaving the room, ' Doggie run over baby ana ' (ana 
was her word for there), pointing into her bedroom. Evi- 
dently she had lived over again in her dream the occur- 
rence with the dog. The effect on her waking life was 



1 38 Suggestion. 

very marked. The next day she could not be induced to 
go into her bedroom, protesting, ' Doggie in ana,' and 
crying lustily if the endeavour was made to carry her. 
Further, for several days the sight of a dog on the street 
threw her into such convulsive fits of fear that her nurse 
brought her home to be quieted — a much more violent 
exhibition, be it noted, than that which occurred after the 
real occurrence with the dog, but before the dream. The 
sight or even the picture of a dog still excites great emo- 
tion, and it is not unlikely that she will carry for life this 
antipathy, and it will appear later to be unaccountable. 1 

Normal Auto- Suggestion. — A further class of sugges- 
tions, which fall under the general phrase ' auto-sugges- 
tion,' of a normal type, may be illustrated. In experiment- 
ing upon the possibility of suggesting sleep to another, I 
have found certain strong reactive influences upon my 
own mental condition. Such an effort, which involves 
the picturing of another as asleep, is a strong auto-sugges- 
tion of sleep, taking effect in my own case in about five 
minutes if the conditions be kept constant. The more 
clearly the patient's sleep is pictured, the stronger be- 
comes the subjective feeling of drowsiness. After about 
ten minutes the ability to give strong concentration seems 
to disintegrate, attention is renewed only by fits and starts 
and in the presence of great mental inertia, and the on- 
coming of sleep is almost overpowering. An unfailing 
cure for insomnia, speaking for myself, is the persistent 
effort to put some one else asleep by hard thinking of the 
end in view, with a continued gentle movement, such as 
stroking the other with the hand. 

1 Fere cites a case of hysterical paralysis brought on by a dream, Sensa- 
tion et Mouvement, p. 25. See also Brain, January, 1887. 



Subconscious Adult Suggestion. 139 

On the other hand, it is impossible to bring on a state 
of drowsiness by imagining myself asleep. The first 
effort at this, indeed, is promising, for it leads to a state 
of restfulness and ease akin to the mental composure 
which is the usual preliminary to sleep ; but it goes no 
farther. It is succeeded by a state of steady wakefulness, 
which effort of attention or effort not to attend only in- 
tensifies. If the victim of insomnia could only forget that 
he is thus afflicted, could forget himself altogether, his case 
would be more hopeful. The contrast between this con- 
dition and that already described shows that it is the self- 
idea, with the emotions it awakens, which prevents the 
suggestion from realizing itself and probably accounts for 
most cases of insomnia. 1 

The attempt to analyze out the emotional 'moments' 
which enter into the latter case yields some such result as 
the following. It is impossible to think of self, however 
vaguely and fugitively, without inducing positive emo- 
tional excitement. All the intense self-motives which 
practical life keeps alive — the most vigorous expressive 
influences of our mental nature — at once tend to spring 
up from their nascent state. There are really no proper 
distinctions among them : pride 2 shades down to compla- 
cency, complacency merges into mild interest, interest be- 
comes intensified in anxiety or fear. Or the mere thought 
of self starts a train of affairs through consciousness about 
which personal concern is lively. When one thinks of 
himself, a kind of egoistic excitement at once arises. It is 

1 This is confirmed by the fact that insomnia readily yields to hypnotic 
suggestion. 

2 A friend informs me that when he pictures himself asleep or dead, he 
cannot help feeling gratified that he makes so handsome a corpse. 



1 40 Suggestion. 

undoubtedly these subjective elements, these emotional 
phases, which prevent such conscious auto-suggestions 
from realizing themselves. 

Sense Exaltation. — Recent hypnotic discussions have 
shown the remarkable exaltation which the senses may 
attain in somnambulism, together with a corresponding 
refinement in the interpretative faculty. Events, etc., 
quite subconscious, usually become suggestions of direct 
influence upon the subject. Unintended gestures, habit- 
ual with the experimenter, may suffice to hypnotize his 
accustomed subject. The possibility of such training of 
the senses in the normal state has not had sufficient em- 
phasis. The young child's subtle discriminations of facial 
and other personal indications are remarkable. The pro- 
longed experience of putting H. to sleep — extending over 
a period of more than six months, during which I slept 
beside her bed — served to make me alive to a certain 
class of suggestions otherwise quite beyond notice. 1 

In the first place, we may note the intense auto-sugges- 
tion of sleep already pointed out, under the stimulus of re- 
peated nursery rhymes regularly resorted to in putting the 
child asleep. Second, surprising progressive exaltation of 
hearing and the interpretation of sounds coming from her in 
a dark room. At the end of four or five months, her move- 
ments in bed awoke me or not according as she herself was 
awake or not. Frequently after awaking I was distinctly 
aware of what movements of hers had awaked me. 2 A 

1 It is well known that mothers are awake to the needs of their infants 
when they are asleep to everything else ; but no psychological observer has, 
to my knowledge, made a personal study of the mental state in himself. 

2 This fact is analogous to our common experience of being awaked by a 
loud noise and then hearing it after we awake ; although the explanation is 
not the same. 



Subconscious Adult Suggestion. 141 

movement of her head by which it was held up from 
her pillow was readily distinguished from the restless 
movements of her sleep. It was not so much, there- 
fore, exaltation of hearing as exaltation of the function 
of the recognition of sounds heard and of their discrimi- 
nation. 

Again, the same phenomenon to an equally marked 
degree attended the sound of her breathing. It is well 
enough known that the smallest functional bodily changes 
induce changes in both the rapidity and the quality of the 
respiration. 1 In sleep the muscles of inhalation and ex- 
halation are relaxed, inhalation becomes long and deep, 
exhalation short and exhaustive, and the rhythmic intervals 
of respiration much lengthened. Now degrees of relative 
wakefulness are indicated with surprising delicacy by the 
slight respiration-sounds given forth by the sleeper. Pro- 
fessional nurses learn to interpret these indications with 
great skill. This kind of hearing-exaltation became very 
pronounced in my operations with my child. After some 
experience the peculiar breathing of advancing or actual 
wakefulness in the child was sufficient to wake me. And 
when awake myself, the change in the infant's respiration- 
sounds to those indicative of on-coming sleep was sufficient 
to suggest or bring on sleep in myself. In the dark, also, 
the general character of her breathing-sounds was inter- 
preted with great accuracy in terms of her varied needs, 
her comfort or discomfort, etc. The same kind of sugges- 
tion from the respiration-sounds now troubles me when- 
ever any one is sleeping within hearing distance. 2 

1 Cf. Vierordt in GerhardPs Handbuch der Kinderkrankheiten, p. 215. 

2 This is an unpleasant result which I find confirmed by professional 
infants' nurses. They complain of loss of sleep when off duty. Mrs. James 



142 Suggestion. 

The reactions in movement upon these suggestions are 
very marked and appropriate, in customary or habitual 
lines, although the stimulations are quite subconscious. 
The clearest illustrations in this body of my experiences 
were afforded by my responses in crude songs to the 
infant's waking movements and breathing-sounds. I have 
often waked myself by myself singing one of two nursery 
rhymes, which by endless repetition night after night had 
become so automatic as to follow in a reactive way upon 
the sense-stimulus from the child. It is certainly aston- 
ishing that among the things which one may get to do 
automatically, we find automatic singing: but writers on 
mental defect have claimed that the function of musical 
or semi-musical expression may be reflex. 1 

The principle of subconscious suggestion, of which 
these simple facts are less important illustrations, has 
very interesting applications in the higher reaches of 
social, moral, and educational theory. I have applied the 

Murray, an infants' nurse in Toronto, informs me that she finds it impossible 
to sleep when she has no infant in hearing distance, and for that reason she 
never asks for a vacation. Her normal sleep has evidently come to depend 
upon continuous soporific suggestions from a child. In another point, also, 
her experience confirms my observations, viz., the child's movements, prelimi- 
nary to waking, awake her, when no other movements of the child do so — 
the consequence being that she is ready for the infant when it gets fully awake 
and cries out. 

I may add that these vague suggestive influences, acting upon the operator, 
have not been sufficiently weighed in the practice of hypnotism. Ochorowicz 
points this out. It is almost impossible for the operator to give suggestions 
which he has not himself taken in a measure from the patient, or which both 
he and the patient have not gotten in common from a common psychic atmos- 
phere. There is, I fancy, a good deal of this reciprocal influence in the cases 
of striking rapport between particular operators and patients. Of course I 
can more easily give effective suggestions to you, if I am myself getting what 
I suggest in whole or part from you in the first instance. 

1 Cf. Wallaschek, Zeitsch.fur Psyckologie, VI., Hefte 2, 3. 



Inhibitory Suggestion. 143 

phrase 'plastic imitation' to certain of the social and 
educational phenomena. 1 

§ 6. Inhibitory Suggestion. 

An interesting class of phenomena which figure perhaps 
at all the levels of suggestion now described, may be 
known as * inhibitory suggestions.' The phrase, in its 
broadest use, refers to all cases in which the suggesting 
stimulus tends to suppress, check, inhibit, movement. We 
find this in certain cases just as strongly marked as the 
positive movement-bringing kind of suggestion. The facts 
may be put under certain heads in relation to the types of 
suggestion already enumerated, the general theory being 
left over for the doctrine of mental development found in 
subsequent chapters. 

Pain Suggestion. — Of course, the fact that pain inhib- 
its movement occurs at once to the reader. As far as this 
is true always, and is a native inherited thing, it is organic, 
and so falls under the head of ' physiological suggestion ' 
of a negative sort. The child shows contracting move- 
ments, crying movements, starting and jumping move- 
ments, shortly after birth, and so plainly that we need not 
hesitate to say that these pain responses are provided for 
in his nervous system ; and that, in general, they are 
inhibitory and contrary to those other natiye reactions 
which indicate pleasure. Our theory provides, as stated 
below, a way of accounting for this state of things. 2 

The influence of pain, besides being thus a physiological 
datum, extends everywhere through mental development. 

1 Mind, January, 1894; cf. Chap. XII., § 2, below. 

2 Especially, Chap. VII., and Chap. XVI., § 2. 



144 Suggestion, 

It is one of the main objects of this book to ascertain its 
exact function, both in individual and in race develop- 
ment ; so any further word upon it here would only anti- 
cipate later detailed treatment. The general fact, however, 
is this : that pain suggests a lively muscular revolt away 
from every stimulus which produces it ; and this state- 
ment includes, of course, the inhibition of any movement 
which gives pain, since this movement is itself felt as a 
stimulating or incoming process along those afferent nerve 
courses which serve as the apparatus of the muscular 
sense. 

Control Suggestion. — This covers all cases which show 
any kind of restraint set upon the movements of the body 
short of that which comes from voluntary intention. The 
infant brings the movements of his legs, arms, head, etc., 
gradually into some kind of order and system. This is 
accomplished by a system of organic checks and counter- 
checks, by which associations are formed between mus- 
cular sensations and certain other sensations, as of sight, 
touch, hearing, etc. The latter serve as suggestions to 
the performance of those movements, and those only> which 
produce the former. The infant learns to hold up his 
head, to raise his trunk, to extend his hands, to grasp with 
thumb opposite the four fingers — all purely by such con- 
trol suggestions. The inhibition and postponement of the 
natural functions for the suitable time and place also fall 
here. 

These cases come so near to the sphere of voluntary 
action — indeed, they pass so directly into volitions — 
that they are more profitably discussed in the chapter 
devoted to that topic. We will there see reasons for 
rejecting the view of some, that these are voluntary acts 



Inhibitory Suggestion. 145 

on the part of the child. The few new observations which 
I have to offer on this topic may also be reserved. 

Contrary Suggestion. — By this is meant a tendency of 
a very remarkable kind observable in many children, no 
less than in many adults, to do the contrary when any 
course is suggested. The very word ' contrary ' is used in 
popular talk to describe an individual who shows this type 
of conduct. Such a child or man is rebellious whenever 
rebellion is possible; he seems to kick constitutionally 
against the pricks. My child E. showed it in her second 
year in a very marked way. When told that a new taste 
was 'good' — a suggestion readily taken in its positive 
sense by her sister at that age — she would turn away 
with evident distaste even when she had liked the same 
taste earlier. When asked to give her hand into mine, — 
a case of direct imitative suggestion, — she thrust it be- 
hind her back. The sight of hat and cloak was a signal 
for a tempest, although she enjoyed out-door excursions. 
These are only instances from many of her contrary sug- 
gestions at this period. The tendency yielded to the all- 
conquering onset of imitation late in her second year, and 
she is now (third year) as docile an imitator as one could 
desire. 

The fact of ' contrariness ' in older children — especially 
boys — is so familiar to all who have observed school 
children with any care, that I need not cite further de- 
tails. And men and women often become so enslaved to 
suggestions of the contrary that they seem only to wait 
for indications of the wishes of others in order to oppose 
and thwart them. 

Contrary suggestions are to be explained as exaggerated 
instances of control. It is easy to see that the checks 

L 



1 46 Suggestion . 

and counter-checks already spoken of as constituting the 
method of control of muscular movement — that these 
may themselves become so habitual and intense as to 
dominate the reactions which they should only regulate. 
The associations between the muscular series and the 
visual series, let us say, which controls it, comes to work 
backwards, so that the drift of the organic processes is 
toward certain contrary reverse movement. Certain of 
the other associates of the control series also, especially 
those which, by strong contrasting experiences of pleasure 
and pain, represent in any sense a contrary series, may 
become dominating. While in the case of simple move- 
ments, as I have said, the dominant associates are only 
the same motor and visual series read backwards ; yet the 
range of contrast effects secured by association extends to 
all cases of opposing systems of movement and suggestions 
of conduct. So contrary suggestion becomes clear as a 
case of auto-suggestion in which the stimulating sensation 
or thought is itself started up in sharp contrast and 
habitual opposition to a present external suggestion of 
the regular kind. 

In the higher reaches of conduct and life we find in- 
teresting cases of very refined contrary suggestion. In 
the man of ascetic temperament, the duty of self-denial 
takes the form of a regular contrary suggestion in oppo- 
sition to every invitation to self-indulgence, however inno- 
cent. And the over-scrupulous mind, like the over-precise, 
is a prey to the eternal remonstrances from the contrary 
which intrude their advice into all his decisions. In matters 
of thought and belief, also, cases are common of stubborn 
opposition to evidence, and persistence in opinion, which 
are in no way due to the cogency of the contrary argu- 
ment, or to real force of conviction. 



Inhibitory Suggestion. 147 

Bashfulness. — I may first give my observations on this 
interesting fact of child-life, considered as an exhibition of 
what I have called ' inhibitory suggestion ' ; and then 
show its bearings. 

The general character of a child's bashfulness need not 
be enlarged upon. Its form of expression is also familiar. 
It begins to appear generally in the first year, showing 
itself as an inhibiting influence upon the child's normal 
activities. Its most evident signs are nervous fingerings 
of dress, objects, hands, etc., turning away of head and 
body, bowing of head and hiding of face, awkward move- 
ments of trunk and legs, and in extreme cases, reddening 
of the face, puckering of lips and eye muscles, and finally 
cries and weeping. An important difference, however, is 
observable in these exhibitions according as the child is 
accompanied by a familiar person or not. When the 
mother or nurse is present, many of the signs seem to be 
useful in securing concealment from the eye of strangers — 
behind dress or apron or figure of the familiar person. In 
the absence, however, of such a refuge the child sinks often 
into a state of general passivity or inhibition of movement, 
akin to the sort of paralysis usually associated with great 
fear. 

This analogy with the physical signs of fear, gives a 
real indication, I think, of the race origin of bashfulness, 
which is probably a differentiation of fear. This I cannot 
dwell upon now, but simply suggest that bashfulness arose 
as a special utility-reaction on occasion of fear of persons, 
in view of personal qualities possessed by the one who fears. 
The concealing tendency also shows the parallel develop- 
ment of intimate personal relationships of protection, sup- 
port, etc., and so gives indications of certain early social 
conditions. 



148 Suggestion. 

My observations of bashfulness — not to dwell upon 
descriptions which have been made before by others — 
serve to throw the illustrations of it into certain periods or 
epochs which I may briefly characterize in order. 

1. The child is earliest seized with what may be called 
'primary' or 'organic' bashfulness akin to the organic 
stages in the well-recognized instinctive emotions, such as 
fear, anger, sympathy, etc. 1 This exhibition occurs in the 
first year and marks the attitudes of the infant toward 
strangers. It is not so much inhibitory of action in this 
first stage ; it rather takes on the positive signs of fear, 
with protestation, shrinking, crying, etc. It falls easily 
under the type of reaction described as ' sensori-motor 
suggestion,' above ; being very largely provided for in the 
nervous equipment of the child at this age. 

The duration of this stage depends largely upon the 
child's social environment. The passage from the attitude 
of instinctive antipathy toward out-siders, and that of 
affection equally instinctive toward the members of the 
household, over into a more reasonable sense of the differ- 
ence between proved friends and unproved strangers — 
this depends directly upon the growth of the sense of 
general social relationships established by experience. 2 
One of the most important elements in the child's prog- 
ress, in this way, out of its ' organic ' social life, is the 
degree and variety of its intercourse with other children, 
and indeed also with other adults, than those of its own 
home. Children carried to summer hotels every year, or 

1 On which last see Chap. XI., § 3, below, and cf. my Handbook of Psy- 
chology, II., Chap. VIII., § 7. 

2 The experience, e.g., largely got through imitation and its clarifying influ- 
ence upon the sense of self in the child : see below, Chap. XI., § 3. 



Inhibitory Suggestion, 149 

brought frequently into the drawing-room to see the 
mothers' callers, soon lose all ' fear of strangers ' and 
become quite frankly approachable, even showing great 
liking for society at the tender age of a year and a half or 
so. On the other hand children kept in extreme isolation 
from strangers, young or old, may show extraordinary 
paralysis of all motor functions, of a markedly organic 
kind, steadily for two or three years later on in their devel- 
opment, when brought suddenly into the presence of those 
who are unfamiliar. 1 

The rapidity with which a child gets over its organic 
bashfulness varies also remarkably with the attitudes of 
older children whom he sees. Nothing else cures a child 
of this physical shyness as quickly as the example of an 
older child. This is also one of the marked offices of imi- 
tation. It presents to the imitative child an example or 
1 copy,' which tends to bring out his action in definite ways 
earlier than his own organic growth would in itself have 
warranted. The child by instinct imitates movements, etc., 
which he would otherwise have waited to acquire largely 
by accident. In this way the stages of social growth are 
very materially shortened. 

2. I find next a period of strong social tendency in the 
child, of toleration of strangers and liking for persons gen- 
erally, in great contrast to the attitudes of organic distrust 
of the earlier period just mentioned. There seems to be 
in this a reaction against the instinct of social self-preser- 
vation characteristic of the earlier stage. It is due in all 

1 See the remarks on such ' isolation,' in reference to the development of 
personality, in my short article, in the Century Magazine, December, 1894, 
repeated in substance below, Chap. XII. , § 3. The matter is to be more fully 
developed in my proposed volume of ' Interpretations.' 



1 50 Suggestion, 

likelihood to the actual experience of the child in receiv- 
ing kind treatment from strangers — kinder in the way of 
indiscriminate indulgence than the more orderly treatment 
which it gets from its own parents. Everybody comes to 
be trusted on first acquaintance by the child, through the 
teachings of his own experience, just as in the earlier 
years everybody was treated by him, under the instincts of 
his inherited nature, as an agent of possible harm. 

That this new phase of social attitude is learned from 
experience is seen in the absence of this confidence, on 
the part of the child, toward animals. The fear, purely 
of the organic stage, persists in the child's thoughts of 
animals which are new to him, and only becomes more 
confirmed as he fails to get the same reasons for ' modify- 
ing his opinion ' that teach him to tolerate strange persons 
more and more comfortably. The contrast is strongly 
brought out sometimes when such a young child meets ani- 
mals in public places. He then turns to persons for pro- 
tection, even to the strange persons before whom, under 
ordinary circumstances, he would stand abashed. His na- 
tive sense of social protection, at first limited to his natural 
protectors in his own house, has come to extend to all 
persons, as against such common enemies as the brutes. 
Later on, as we know, the domestic animals get taken 
over, also, from the one class into the other. 

3. Finally I note the return of bashfulness in the 
child's second and third years. This time it is bashful- 
ness in the proper sense of the term, rid of the element 
of fear, and rid, largely, of its compelling organic force 
and methods of expression. The bashful three-year-old 
smiles in the midst of his hesitations, draws near to the 
object of his curiosity, is evidently overwhelmed with the 



Inhibitory Suggestion. 151 

sense of his own presence rather than with that of his new 
acquaintance, and indulges in actions calculated to keep 
notice drawn to himself. 

The reality of this group of the child's social attitudes, 
and the great contrast which they present to those of the 
organic period, can hardly have too much emphasis. It 
is one of the great outstanding facts of his progressive 
relation to the elements of his social milieu. There is a 
sort of self-exhibition, almost of coquetry, in the child's 
behaviour; which shows the most remarkable commin- 
gling of native organic elements with the social lessons of 
personal well- and ill-desert which are now becoming of 
such importance in his life. All this makes so marked a 
contrast to the exhibitions of organic bashfulness that it 
constitutes in my opinion a most important resource for 
the study of the evolution of the social sense. 

In this last case we have before us, in short, a phenome- 
non of rather complex self -consciousness — a thing of 
ideal value — and its suggestion-complexes, as they body 
themselves forth in the child's reactions, tell of his extraor- 
dinary progress in the understanding of himself and the 
world. He now begins to show the germ of modesty and 
of all the emotions akin to and contrary to it. 

With this degree of progress I shall now leave the child, 
reserving for my later work the discussion of the develop- 
ment of true modesty in its later stages in the intricate 
special movements of adolescence : but it remains to point 
out the congruity between this scheme of the child's dif- 
ferent behaviours in respect to persons and the different 
mental suggestions which in an earlier place 1 we found 
him actually getting from persons. 

1 Cf. § 3 of this chapter, above, which restates an article on ' Personality 
Suggestion,' in The Psychological Review >, I., p. 274, May, 1894. 



152 Suggestion. 

It will be remembered that several aspects of the child's 
personal environment were found to appeal to him in a 
progressive way. It seemed fair to think that persons are 
at first to him only a peculiar part of his 'projected,' 
presented, objective, world of things. He has ' personal 
projects,' as we found it well to call them, before he has 
any sense of himself as a spiritual being or as the subject 
of his own mental processes. The getting of objects 
seems to be part of the business for which his nervous 
equipment more or less adequately provides, and among 
these objects, the persons who move around him get them- 
selves characterized by very important marks. 

The observation of organic bashfulness tends, when 
viewed in connection with this earlier point, to confirm 
this view of the way the child begins to apprehend per- 
sons ; and at the same time, it enables us to see a little 
farther. For strange as it may appear, we are here con- 
fronted with an element of organic equipment especially 
fitted to receive and respond to these peculiar objects, per- 
sons, 'personal projects.' The child strikes instinctively 
an extraordinary series of attitudes when persons appear 
among his objects, attitudes which other objects, qua 
objects, do not excite. And later in life, in the organic 
effects indicative of modesty, such as blushing, hesitat- 
ing, etc., we find similar signs of a social rapport which 
has grown into the very fibers of our nerves. These 
attitudes extend somewhat to animals, as we have seen ; 
and that makes it all the more striking. For animals are 
persons, to a child of that age ; they act upon him through 
his animal parts, through physical pains, pleasures, fears, 
etc., and that is the only way that persons also can act 
upon an infant a year old. 



Inhibitory Suggestion. 153 

We have to say, therefore, that the child is born to be a 
member of society, in the same sense, precisely, that he is 
born with eyes and ears to see and hear the movements 
and sounds of the world, and with touch to feel the things 
of space ; and, as I hope to show later in detail, all views 
of the man as a total creature a creation, must recognize 
him not as a single soul shut up in a single body to act, or 
to abstain from acting, upon others similarly shut up in 
similar bodies ; but as a soul partly in his own body, partly 
in the bodies of others, to all intents and purposes, so inti- 
mate is this social bond — a service for which he pays in 
kind, since we see in his body, considered simply as a 
physical organism, preparation for the reception of the 
soul-life, the suggestions of mind and spirit, of those 
others. I do not see wherein the community of the senses 
together, in a single life of nervous activity, differs very 
much in conception from this community of men, bound 
together by the native ties which lie at the basis of their 
most abstract and developed social organizations. 

Again, the second phase of the child's actions in the 
presence of persons — the freer, more ready reception of 
strangers and intercourse with them, seen usually during 
the second year — this also gives us what our earlier notes 
on ' personality suggestion ' would lead us to expect. We 
saw that the child begins to find out more about persons, 
and so to gain associations which give him the beginning 
of certain expectations regarding them; self-formed ex- 
pectations, that is, no longer dependent merely upon the 
stirrings of instinct and inherited impulse. He learns that 
pleasure almost always comes from persons, and so does 
the alleviation of pain. This is a mortal blow at organic 
bashfulness, as every father and mother knows. A lump 



154 Suggestion, 

of sugar will very soon release the inhibitions of the shy 
year-old. Then he further learns something of the char- 
acteristics of persons, the irregularity of personal action, 
the presence of the ' personal equation ' of mood and 
feeling in those nearest to him. This leads him to seek 
out methods, somewhat individual to himself, of pleasing 
these near persons and of securing their smile and appro- 
bation, or of escaping the reproofs which even his shy- 
ness brings ; and these he substitutes for the blinder 
attempt which nature taught him to hide his physical 
person. 

And he also learns our habits, the regularities of char- 
acter in adults, and so learns that nobody means to hurt 
him, after all. It is amusing how soon a two- or three- 
year-old child ' sizes up ' a stranger, and meets him half- 
way with conduct more or less appropriately attuned to 
the indications of character shown in the face and acts 
of the newcomer. 

So, with all this, the instinctive or ' organic ' bashf ulness 
gets rapidly rubbed away. But it is now clear that the 
means of this freedom from it are all social. A child's 
growth away from the instinct of social fear to the appre- 
hension of social truth, and all his actions midway in this 
progress, come only from varied and persistent experience 
of people and appeals to living examples. How can char- 
acter be apprehended if characters are absent ? And how 
can character-schemes be grown into, if the regularity of 
the child's life is of so narrow a scope that all the threads 
of his social relationship run the same way, and no tan- 
gles and confusions arise to bring out his own strenuous 
action and his rebellions against his native reflex ways of 
behaviour ? 



Inhibitory Suggestion. 155 

The on-coming of true bashf ulness, finally, — the bash- 
fulness which shows reflection, in its simpler form, upon 
self and the actions of self, — represents the child's direct 
application of what he knows of persons to his own inner 
life. It is what I have called the 'subjective' stage in 
his sense of personality. 1 

But, as we shall also see, this grows only apace with 
the contrary movement by which he assigns his own 
enriched mental experience back to his teacher, and seeks 
his further judgment upon it. The child, when he knows 
himself able to draw a figure, for example, does not know 
this alone, or this completely. He has also the sense of 
the social ' copy ' or example from which the lesson was 
learned, and further and with it, he knows that his per- 
formance is again subject to revision in light of the 
approval or disapproval of teacher or friend. The per- 
formances of the self cannot in any case be freed from 
the sense of possible inspection by others, and the child 
shrinks from this inspection. This has further develop- 
ment below. Suffice it to say that in this higher rapport, 
which involves clearly the sense of self-agency, but self- 
agency still tied down to the agency of other people 
like self, — here in the real reflective relation of self to 
others, — comes the third and crowning stage of the class 
of phenomena known by the word bashfulness. My chil- 
dren do their imperfect tasks for me because they know 
me to understand and be indulgent : even the elder, as- 
sumes the patron, and says of the younger : * She is so 
little, you know.' But in the presence of the stranger 
whose opinion is not known beforehand, they are bashful 
with the sense of new standards perhaps firmly insisted 

1 See Mind, January, 1894; also below, Chap. XI., § 3. 



156 Suggestion, 

upon. This is where the inhibiting suggestion of true 
bashfulness appears: that of modesty, and clearly also 
that of certain ethical emotions. 

The whole situation becomes, I may add, an extraordi- 
nary point of vantage for estimating the development view 
of the origin of the social and personal sense. We have 
in it direct evidence of the growth of the social instinct 
by accretions from experiences of social conditions — or 
if we go into refinements of biological theory, from the 
adding up of variations all fitted to survive socially — and 
direct evidence, further, of the lines of progress which 
these experiences and variations have marked out. For 
the infant is an embryo person, a social unit in the process 
of forming; and he is, in these early stages, plainly 
recapitulating the items in the social history of the race. 1 

This social evolution presents a phase, therefore, of gen- 
eral development in which the theory that the individual 
goes through stages which repeat the race-stages of his 
species, ought to find illustrations of more than common 
value. For the social life is a late attainment, whether 
considered anthropologically or racially, and the child waits 
to begin the series of * laps in the social race ' until he 
meets us, his observers, face to face. The embryology of 
society is open to study in the nursery. 

I think, accordingly, that several important hints at the 
history of societies, both animal and human, are afforded 
by the phenomena of bashfulness as now described. 
These I can do no more than mention at present. 

Organic bashfulness would seem to represent the in- 

1 See the discussion of the biological theory of ' Recapitulation,' above, 
Chap. I. 



Inhibitory Suggestion. 157 

stinctive fear shown by the higher animals, coupled with 
the natural family and gregarious instincts which they 
have. This shades up into the more fearless and more 
confiding attitudes of certain passibly peaceable creatures, 
which take kindly to domestication, and depend more upon 
animal organizations and natural defences, such as those 
afforded by geographical distribution, coloration, habits of 
life, etc., for their protection. For the social protections 
are after all more effective for the defence of racial life 
and propagation, than the special instinctive armament 
of individuals. Then, of course, only in man do we find 
the stage of reflective thought on self and the social 
relations of self, which is seen germinating in the child 
in the third year or later. 

The parallel seems also to be worth something to the 
anthropologist when he comes to inquire into the history 
of the human species. Admitting with Westermarck that 
man as a species is monogamous and tends to family life, 
we should find in his earliest history the period corre- 
sponding to the organic bashfulness of the child ; and its 
instinctive presence in the very young child lends some 
support, perhaps, to Westermarck's view. The later tribal 
and nomadic conditions possibly tended to release the 
cords of an instinct so purely defensive, and to bring in 
the freer range of peaceful pursuits represented, it is con- 
ceivable, by the second stage of the child's history ; while 
again the stage of development of the distinctly industrial, 
artistic, and commercial life of man, with its social ways 
of solving all problems of public welfare, corresponds to 
the more reflective attainments of the period which is seen 
dawning in the true bashfulness of the three-year-old. 
For there can be no doubt that recent writers are correct 



158 Suggestion. 

in finding that the more refined egoism is a reflex from 
the more generalized socialism ; a thesis which social psy- 
chology takes now from the analyses of men like Balzac 
and Bourget and the insights of Tarde and the historians 
of society ; but one which it is itself quite able, I think, to 
make good by its own methods of inquiry. 

§ 7. Hypnotic Suggestion. 

The facts upon which the current theories of hypnotism 
are based may be summed up under a few heads, and the 
recital of them will serve to bring this class of phenomena 
into the general lines of classification drawn out in this 
chapter. 

The Facts. When by any cause the attention is held 
fixed upon an object, say a bright button, for a sufficient 
time without distraction, the subject begins to lose con- 
sciousness in a progressive way. Generalizing this simple 
experiment, we may say that any method or device which 
serves to secure undivided and prolonged attention to any 
kind of a * suggestion,' — be it object, idea, anything that 
can be thought about, — this brings on what is called 
hypnosis to a person normally constituted. 

The Paris school of interpreters find three stages of 
progress in the hypnotic sleep : First, catalepsy \ character- 
ized by rigid fixity of the muscles in any position in which 
the limbs may be put by the experimenter, with great 
suggestibility on the side of consciousness, and anaesthesia 
in certain areas of the skin and in certain of the special 
senses; second, lethargy, in which consciousness seems to 
disappear entirely, the subject cannot be aroused by any 
sense stimulation by eye, ear, skin, etc., and the body is 
flabby and pliable as in natural sleep ; third, somnam- 



Hypnotic Suggestion. 159 

bulisnt, so called from its analogies to the ordinary sleep- 
walking condition to which many persons are subject. 
This last covers the phenomena of ordinary mesmeric 
exhibitions at which travelling mesmerists ' control ' per- 
sons before audiences and make them obey their com- 
mands. While other scientists properly deny these distinct 
stages as such, they may yet be taken as representing 
extreme instances of the phenomena, and serve as points 
of departure for further discussion. 

On the mental side the general characteristics of hyp- 
notic somnambulism are as follows : 1 . The impairing of 
memory in a peculiar way. In the hypnotic condition all 
affairs of the ordinary life are forgotten ; on the other 
hand, after waking, the events of the hypnotic condition 
are forgotten. Further, in any subsequent period of hyp- 
nosis the events of the former similar periods are remem- 
bered. So a person who is habitually hypnotized has two 
continuous memories ; one for the events of his normal 
life, only when he is normal, and one for the events of 
his hypnotic periods, only when he is hypnotized. 

2. Suggestibility to a remarkable degree. By this is 
meant the tendency of the subject to have in reality any 
mental condition which is suggested to him. He is sub- 
ject to suggestions both on the side of his receptivity to 
impressions and on the side of action. He will see, hear, 
remember, believe, refuse to see, hear, etc., anything, with 
some doubtful exceptions, which may be suggested to him 
by word or deed, or even by the slightest and perhaps un- 
conscious indications of those about him. On the side of 
conduct his suggestibility is equally remarkable. Not only 
will he act in harmony with the illusions of sight, etc., sug- 
gested to him, but he will carry out, like an automaton, 



1 60 Suggestion. 

the actions suggested to him. Further, pain, pleasure, and 
the organic accompaniments of them may be produced by 
suggestion. The arm may be actually scarred with a 
lead-pencil if the patient be told that it is red-hot iron. 
A suggested pain brings vaso-motor and other bodily 
changes that prove, as similar tests in the other cases 
prove, that simulation is impossible and the phenomena 
are real. These phenomena and those given below are no 
longer based on the mere reports of the ' mesmerists,' but 
are the recognized property of legitimate psychology. 

Again, such suggestions may be for a future time, and 
get themselves performed only when a determined inter- 
val has elapsed ; they are then called deferred or post- 
hypnotic suggestions. Post-hypnotic suggestions are those 
which include the command not to perform them until a 
certain time after the subject has returned to his normal 
condition ; such suggestions are — if of reasonably trifling 
character — actually carried out afterward in the normal 
state, although the person is conscious of no reason why 
he should act in such a way, having no remembrance 
whatever that he had received the suggestion when hyp- 
notized. Such post-hypnotic performances may be de- 
ferred by suggestion for many months. 

3. So-called Exaltation of the mental faculties, espe- 
cially of the senses : increased acuteness of vision, hear- 
ing, touch, memory, and the mental functions generally. 
By reason of this great 'exaltation,' hypnotized patients 
may get suggestions which are not intended from experi- 
menters, and discover their intentions when every effort 
is made to conceal them. Often emotional changes in 
expression are discerned by them ; and if it be admitted 
that their power of logical and imaginative insight is cor- 



Hypnotic Suggestion. 161 

respondingly exalted, there is practically no limit to the 
patient's ability to read, simply from physical indications, 
the mental states of those who experiment with him. 

4. So-called Rapport. This term covers all the facts, 
known before the subject was scientifically investigated, 
by such expressions as ' personal magnetism,' ' will power ' 
over the subject, etc. It is true that one particular opera- 
tor alone may be able to hypnotize a particular patient ; 
and in this case the patient is, when hypnotized, open to 
suggestions only from this person. He is deaf and blind 
to everything enjoined by any one else. It is easy to see 
from what has already been said that this does not involve 
any occult nerve influence or mental power. A sensitive 
patient anybody can hypnotize, provided only that the 
patient have the idea or conviction that the experimenter 
possesses such power. Now, let a patient get the idea 
that only one man can hypnotize him, and that is the 
beginning of the hypnotic suggestion itself. It is a part 
of the suggestion that a certain personal rapport is neces- 
sary; so the patient must have this rapport. This is 
shown by the fact that, when such a patient is hypnotized, 
the operator in rapport with him can transfer the so-called 
control to any one else simply by suggesting to the patient 
that this third party can also hypnotize him. Rapport, there- 
fore, and all the amazing claims of charlatans to powers of 
charming, stealing another's personality, controlling his 
will at a distance — all such claims are explained, as far 
as they have anything to rest upon, by suggestion under 
conditions of mental hyperesthesia or exaltation. 

I may now add certain practical remarks on this subject, 
since it is new, and since these remarks may tend to mark 
off the range of the phenomena more clearly. 

M 



1 62 Suggestion, 

In general, any method which fixes the attention to a 
single stimulus long enough is probably sufficient to pro- 
duce hypnosis ; but the result is quick and profound in 
proportion as the patient has the idea that it is going to 
succeed, i.e., gets the suggestion of sleep. It may be 
said, therefore, that the elaborate performances, such as 
passes, rubbings, mysterious incantations, etc., often re- 
sorted to, have no physiological effect whatever, and 
only serve to work in the way of suggestion upon the 
mind of the subject. In view of this it is probable that 
any person in normal health can be hypnotized, provided 
he is not too sceptical of the operator's knowledge and 
powers; and, on the contrary, any one can hypnotize 
another, provided he do not arouse too great scepticism, 
and is not himself wavering and clumsy. It is probable, 
however, that susceptibility varies greatly in degree, and 
that race exerts an important influence. Thus in Europe 
the French seem to be the most susceptible, and the Eng- 
lish and Scandinavians the least so. The impression that 
weak-minded persons are most available is quite mistaken. 
On the contrary, patients in the insane asylums, idiots, 
etc., are the most refractory. This is to be expected, from 
the fact that in these cases power of strong, steady atten- 
tion is wanting. The only one class of pathological cases 
which seem peculiarly open to the hypnotic influence is 
that of the hystero-epileptics, whose tendencies are toward 
extreme suggestibility. Further, one may hypnotize him- 
self — so-called auto-suggestion — especially after having 
been put into the trance more than once by others. 1 

1 It is further evident that frequent hypnotization is very damaging if done 
by the same operator, since then the patient contracts a habit of responding 
to the same class of suggestions; and this may influence his normal life. A 
further danger arises from the possibility that all suggestions have not been 



Hypnotic Suggestion, 163 

So-called ' criminal suggestions ' may be made, with 
more or less effect, in the hypnotic state. Cases have 
been tried in the French courts, in which evidence for and 
against such influence of a third person over the criminal 
has been admitted. The reality of the phenomenon, how- 
ever, is in dispute. The Paris school claims- that criminal 
acts can be suggested to the hypnotized subject which 
are just as certain to be performed by him as any other 
acts. Such a subject will discharge a blank-loaded pistol 
at any one, when told to do so, or stab him with a paper 
dagger. While admitting the facts, the Nancy theorists 
claim that the subject knows the performance to be a 
farce; gets suggestions of the unreality of it from the 
experimenters, and so acquiesces. This is probably true, 
as is seen in frequent cases in which patients have refused, 
in the hypnotic sleep, to perform suggested acts which 
shocked their modesty, veracity, etc. This goes to show 
that the Nancy school are right in saying that while, in 
hypnosis, suggestibility is exaggerated to an enormous 
degree, still it has limits in the more well-knit habits, 
moral sentiments, social opinions, etc., of the subjects. 

removed from the patient's mind before his awaking. Competent scientific 
observers always make it a point to do this. It is possible also that damaging 
effects result directly to a man from frequent hypnotizing; and this is probable 
to a degree, simply from the fact that the state is abnormal and, while it lasts, 
pathological. Consequently, all general exhibitions in public, as well as all 
individual exercises of this kind, should be prohibited by law, and the whole 
practical application, as well as observation of hypnosis should be left in the 
hands of physicians who have proved their fitness by an examination and se- 
cured a certificate of license. 

Farther, Liegeois suggests — what is quite an unnecessary resource — 
that every child should be hypnotized by a special official, and the suggestion 
made to him, once for all, that no one under any circumstances shall be able 
to throw him into hypnosis again. In Russia, a decree (summer, 1893) per- 
mits physicians to practise hypnotism for purposes of cure under official certi- 
ficates. In France public exhibitions are forbidden. 



1 64 Suggestion. 

And it further shows that hypnosis is probably, as they 
claim, a temporary disturbance, rather than a pathological 
condition of mind and body. 

There have been many remarkable and sensational cases 
of cure of disease by hypnotic suggestion reported, espe- 
cially in France. That hysteria in all its manifold mani- 
festations has been relieved is certainly true, but that any 
organic, structural disease has ever been cured by hypno- 
tism is unproven. It is not regarded by medical authori- 
ties as an agent of much therapeutic value, and is rarely 
employed ; but it is doubtful, in view of the natural preju- 
dice caused by the pretensions of charlatans, whether its 
merits have been fairly tested. 1 

Theory. Two rival theories are held as to the general 
character of hypnosis. The Paris school already referred 
to, led by Charcot, hold that it is a pathological condition 
which can be induced only in patients already mentally dis- 
eased, or having neuropathic tendencies. They claim that 
the three stages described above are a discovery of great 
importance. 2 The so-called Nancy school, on the other 

1 On the European continent it has been successfully applied in a great va- 
riety of cases; and Bernheim has shown that minor nervous troubles, insom- 
nia, migraines, drunkenness, lighter cases of rheumatism, sexual and digestive 
disorders, together with a host of smaller temporary causes of pain — corns, 
cricks in back and side, etc. — may be cured or very materially alleviated by 
suggestions conveyed in the hypnotic state. In many cases such cures are 
permanently effected with aid from no other remedies. In a number of great 
city hospitals, patients of recognized classes are at once hypnotized, and sug- 
gestions of cure made. Liebeault, the founder of the Nancy school, has the 
credit of having first made use of hypnosis as a remedial agent. It is also be- 
coming more and more recognized as a method of controlling refractory and 
violent patients in asylums and reformatory institutions. It must be added, 
however, that ' in general ' psychological theory rather than medical practice 
is seriously concerning itself with this subject. 

2 The best books on this side are Binet and Fere, Animal Magnetism ; 



Law of Dynamogenesis. 165 

hand, led by Bernheim, deny the pathological character of 
hypnosis altogether, claiming that the hypnotic condition 
is nothing more than a special form of ordinary sleep 
brought on artificially by suggestion. Suggestion, they 
say, is only an exaggeration of an influence to which all 
persons are normally subject. All the variations, stages, 
curious phenomena, etc., of the Paris school, say they, can 
be explained by this ' suggestion ' hypothesis. The Nancy 
school is completely victorious, as far as the great mass 
of the facts are concerned. 1 

The facts show an intimacy of interaction between mind 
and body, to which current psychology in its psycho-phy- 
sical theories is only beginning to do justice; and it is 
this aspect of the whole matter which I would emphasize 
in this connection. It will be observed that all the phases 
of ' suggestion,' passed in review in earlier sections of this 
chapter, get direct illustration from similar phenomena 
occurring in hypnosis. I need not cite them again in de- 
tail. The hypnotic condition of consciousness may, there- 
fore, be taken to represent the thing called ' suggestion ' 
most remarkably. 

§ 8. Law of Dynamogenesis. 

The facts of suggestion now given may be generalized 
under a so-called Maw/ which current psychology and 
biology agree in accepting as a well-established principle 

Janet, Automatisme Psychologique ; Charcot's medical treatises (GEuvres 
completes, Vol. IX.) ; numerous articles in the Revue Philosophique. 

1 Their best books are Moll, Hypnotism ; Bernheim, Suggestive Therapeu- 
tics ; £tudes nouvelles sur V Hypnotisme ; Ochorowicz, Mental Suggestion. 
Cf. my popular articles ' Among the Psychologists of Paris ' and ' With 
Bernheim at Nancy' in the Nation (N.Y.), July 28, and Aug. II, 1892, and 
'Hypnotism' in the new edition (1894) of Johnson's Universal Cyclopcedia. 



1 66 Suggestion, 

of the manifestations of organic and mental life. The 
principle of contractility recognized in biology simply 
states that all stimulations to living matter, — from proto- 
plasm to the highest vegetable and animal structures, — 
if they take effect at all, tend to bring about movements 
or contractions in the mass of the organism. This is now 
also safely established as a phenomenon of consciousness 
— that every sensation or incoming process tends to bring 
about action or outgoing process. The facts of suggestion 
now set forth may be taken as, in so far, an array of evi- 
dence in support of what we may call, once for all, Dynamo- 
genesis. Certain practical illustrations of it are given in 
the chapters which immediately precede : they show also 
the sure foundation of the method of studying children 
which I have based upon it. I shall accordingly expect 
no opposition to the use of this principle as the founda- 
tion-stone of the theory of organic development developed 
subsequently in this work, however faulty my presentation 
of it may be in the eyes of competent critics in either of 
these sciences. 

In attempting, however, to reach some kind of formula 
of dynamogenesis we encounter a certain difficulty. For 
when we had occasion to inquire in an earlier place what 
the main character of all suggestion is, that character 
which constitutes it suggestion, we found definitions 
very conflicting; and gave as our own definition only the 
most general description of the reaction called suggestive, 
i.e., that it always issues in a movement more or less 
closely associated in earlier experience with the particular 
stimulus in question. 

This, it is plain, constitutes suggestion a phenomenon 
of greater or less habit, taking hypnotic suggestion as 



Law of Dynarnogenesis. 167 

type, in which prompt discharges in well-formed pathways 
is the striking fact. Numerous instances among the facts 
reported in this chapter come to mind. The statement 
ordinarily made in the more recent psychologies, to the 
effect that the idea of a movement is already the begin- 
ning of that movement, serves to generalize these facts, 
provided we understand by the 'idea of a movement,' not 
merely the clear consciousness of a movement, but also 
the vaguest and most subconscious reminiscences, feelings, 
intimations of movement, which cluster or hang about or 
enter into, however meagrely, the state of mind which 
issues in the movement making up the suggested reaction. 

But it is just as evident, when we recall the various 
instances in detail, that they have another and different 
aspect. Very many suggestions seem to perform a func- 
tion which is not exhausted when we say that they issue 
in movements. They issue in movements, it is true ; but 
not in exactly the movements and those alone which have 
been associated with these stimuli before. Many of them 
seem to beget new movements, by a kind of adaptation of 
the organism — movements which are an evident improve- 
ment upon those which the organism has formerly accom- 
plished. 

To make this plain we have only to recall some cases 
from the reports made in this chapter and the earlier ones. 
The child learns handwriting by acting upon the sugges- 
tion which the copy set before him affords. How could he 
control his movements at all, if each suggestion called out 
only the movements which he had already learned ? The 
child adapts himself again to persons, and differently to 
different persons, from week to week. How does he do 
this ? Persons of course suggest action to him, but how 



1 68 Suggestion. 

does he manage to break up, in appropriate ways, the fixed 
organic tendencies to action in which we have found early 
bashfulness to consist ? The child learns to estimate dis- 
tance and his visual experiences become, as we have seen, 
suggestions to him of hand movements remarkably adjusted 
to his reach and to the dimensions and directions, etc., 
of things. How is this done ? And so might more cases 
be cited. 

This aspect of suggestion opens up what is one of the 
main problems of this book to discuss, the theory of 
Accommodation. It is only in point here to show that this 
thing, accommodation, is a fact, and that it consists in some 
influence in the organism which works directly in the face 
of habit. Suggestion is the only way to break up habit. 

We saw above, also, two views as to the presence and 
influence of consciousness in this matter of suggestion. 
Some theorists hold that there is no suggestion without 
consciousness ; others that consciousness is not a necessary 
element. The dispute seems to turn upon the predomi- 
nant recognition in reactions of one of the two tendencies, 
Habit or Accommodation. It is true and universal that 
consciousness tends to disappear from reactions as they 
are oftener repeated — as they become, that is, more 
habitual. The things we have learned to do best, 
most definitely, most exactly, most unalterably in a word, 
these things require least thought, direction, feeling, con- 
sciousness. So with our reflex and semi-automatic ac- 
tions : they come to go on, as pathological cases show, 
without the cortex of the brain, in cases when fainting or 
forgetfulness deprive us of all knowledge that we do them. 
On the other hand, we find that whenever there is ac- 
commodation — the breaking up of habit, the effort to 



Law of Dynamogenesis. 169 

learn, the acquirement of new movements, and co-ordina- 
tions of movement — there consciousness is present, and 
present in vivid and heightened form according as the 
habit fought against is fixed, and the road to the new- 
acquisition an uphill road. The things most new, difficult, 
imperfect, hard to effect, these dwell in the very focus 
of our personal knowledge and attention. 

As I said some time ago, in summing up the two differ- 
ent principles : " Physiologically, Habit means readiness 
for function, produced by previous exercise of that func- 
tion. . . . Psychologically, it means loss of oversight, dif- 
fusion of attention, subsiding consciousness. . . . Physio- 
logically and anatomically, Accommodation means the 
breaking up of a habit, the widening of the organic for 
the reception or accommodation of a new condition. Psy- 
chologically, it means reviving consciousness, concentra- 
tion of attention, voluntary control." * 

So far as we have now gone we have a right to use the 
principle of suggestion, and its statement in motor terms 
as a principle of dynamogenesis, whenever we mean to say 
simply that action follows stimulus. But when we come 
to ask what kind of action follows, in each case, each 
special kind of stimulus, we have two possibilities before 
us. A habit may follow, or an accommodation may follow. 
Which is it ? And why is it one rather than the other ? 
These are the questions of the theory of organic develop- 
ment, to which our next chapters are devoted. 

1 Feeling and Will, p. 49. 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Theory of Development. 

§ i. Organic Adaptation in General. 

In the preceding discussions we have traced some 
phases of the development of consciousness. The two 
great principles of Habit and Accommodation have been 
noted, simply, and we have intimated incidentally that 
by them two great gains are made possible to the organ- 
ism : first, the repetition of what is worth repeating, 
with the conserving of this worth: this is Habit; and, 
second, the adaptation of the organism to new conditions, 
so that it secures, progressively, further useful reac- 
tions, which at an earlier stage would have been im- 
possible : this is Accommodation. It now remains to 
give these two principles a searching examination. 

Further, the fundamental fact of reaction itself, at what- 
ever stage it be looked at, is expressed by the principle of 
Dynamogenesis, which, when put broadly, reads : Every 
organic stimulus tends to express itself in movement, 
This we have been able to illustrate with some chapters of 
new observations and experiments. 

The psychological bearings of these principles are taken 
up below. It remains to ask here whether we can go fur- 
ther in a constructive way on the physiological side. 

A little reflection leads us to see that the main question 

170 



Organic Adaptation in General, 171 

of adaptation is still unanswered. It is evident that repe- 
titions plus accommodations give adaptations; and that 
adaptations involve, in some way, so-called * selections.' 
Where, in the function of the organism, does the remark- 
able fact of selection come in ? How does the organism 
select the proper things to accommodate itself to, and 
refuse the improper ? 

The real meaning of this question becomes clear when 
we put it differently. Considering the state of an organ- 
ism at any moment, with its readiness to act in an appro- 
priate fashion, — say a child's imitation of a movement, 
— the appropriateness of its action may be construed in 
either of two ways : either retrospectively or prospectively. 
By construing it retrospectively, I mean that an organ- 
ism performs its appropriate function when it does what 
it has done before — what it is suited to do, however it 
may have come to be so suited. The child imitates my 
movement because his apparatus is ready for this move- 
ment. This is Habit; it proceeds by repetition. But 
when we come to ask how it got to be suited to do this 
function the first time, or how it can come to do a new 
function from now on, — how the child manages to imitate 
a new movement, one which he has never made before, — 
this is the prospective reference, and this question we must 
now try to answer. 

To illustrate from the highest sphere, that of the volun- 
tary learning of new actions : Suppose I see a man draw 
a picture, or paint a landscape, and realize that it repre- 
sents a very useful accommodation of muscular move- 
ments, and then desire to imitate him. I am not able 
simply to tell my muscles to do it, or simply to will 
to do what he does. I find my muscles are chained 



172 The Theory of Development. 

down to what I have already learned, to what they have 
done before ; my actions, that is, have the retrospective 
reference. So the child sees me write a letter or cut a 
toothpick, and he is quite unable to do it. He must 
learn, we say. But that is just the question of prospec- 
tive reference : how is he to learn ? How is it possible 
for an organism to acquire any new adaptive movement 
whatever ? 

When we come to look broadly at the biological series 
and take all the resources of modern evolution doctrine 
into account, we find several ways in which the reactions 
of an organism may get such a 'prospective reference,' 
all of which are partial statements of a more fundamental 
one, and each of which has its peculiar value in its own 
place in the phylogenetic series. These different ways in 
which an organism ' learns ' new accommodations may be 
set forth in order. 

I. Natural selection as operative directly upon individual 
organisms. If we suppose, at first, organisms capable of 
reacting to stimulations by random diffused movement, we 
may then suppose the stimuli to which they react to be 
some beneficial and some injurious. If the beneficial ones 
recur more frequently to some organisms, these would live 
rather than others to which damaging stimuli came more 
often. The former, therefore, would be selected ; and it 
amounts to the same thing as if organisms of neutral char- 
acter had learned, each for itself, to react to certain bene- 
ficial stimuli only. This is the current biological doctrine. 

But we may go a step further. Among the variations 
in organic forms, it is easy to see that some of them might 
react in a way to keep in contact with the stimulus, to lay 
hold on it, and so keep on reacting to it again and again — 



Organic Adaptation in General. 173 

just as our rhythmic action in breathing keeps the organ- 
ism in vital contact with the oxygen of the air. These 
organisms would get all the benefit or damage of the 
repetition or persistence of the stimulation and of their 
own reactions, again and again ; and it is self-evident that 
the beneficial stimulations are the ones which should be 
maintained in this way, and that the organisms which did 
this would live. The organisms which reacted in such 
a way as to retain the damaging stimulations, on the other 
hand, by this same process, would aid nature in killing 
themselves. If this be true, only those organisms would 
survive which had the variation of retaining useful stimu- 
lations in what I have called in speaking of imitation 
elsewhere a ' circular way ' of reacting. Thus unicellular 
creatures of this particular kind were selected, we may 
suppose, as a matter of fact, from absolutely random- 
moving creatures, if any such existed — a point discussed 
below. And as all others died out in competition with 
them, it became a universal property of vital organisms of 
any degree of development that they should react to retain 
their own vital stimulations. Now this again is exactly 
the same result as if originally neutral organisms had each 
learned for itself to make this particular kind of reactions. 
The life principle has learned it, but with the help of the 
stimulating environment and natural selection. 1 

But the question remains : what kind of reaction would 
it be that such a creature would possess to accomplish 
this result ? What would be the nature of the variation ? 
Evidently the easiest answer to this question is, that con- 

1 This is one of the essential modifications which I suggest to the current 
theory of biological development. More is said of it below in § 2 of this 
chapter, and in Chap. IX., where particular evidence is cited. 



174 The Theory of Development. 

sciousness with its selective property arises here, and by 
it new actions are selected. But I do not see how 
consciousness could accomplish the fact of selection, 
even though it arose as a variation, until after it had 
itself experienced the reaction to be selected. This 
would mean that it had some property of selecting out 
during the organism's life-history certain kinds of reaction 
already possible to this particular organism. But since it 
is possible for an organism to have the stimulus-retaining 
reactions which I have described, simply by its own 
responses, this may be considered sufficient for its survival 
anyhow, whether it were conscious or not. So I see no 
argument one way or the other as to the origin of con- 
sciousness at this first stage of natural selection. The 
case is different, however, when we come to consider 
further development during the life-history of the particular 
organism. 

2. Natural selection as operative upon different reactions 
of the same organism. The fact of ' life-history ' is just 
what distinguishes an organism from what is a ' mechanical 
arrangement,' and not an organism. A steam engine has 
no life-history because it makes no progress, it simply 
repeats a constant function. That engine survives which 
is best adapted, in its construction, to the function of an 
engine. That is the principle already cited. It is neces- 
sary to consider further how certain reactions of one 
single organism can be selected so as to adapt the organ- 
ism better and give it a life-history. Let us at the outset 
call this process ' organic selection,' in contrast with the 
• natural selection ' of whole organisms. 

Our first principle would do no more than effect the 
survival of organisms which repeated or retained useful 



Organic Adaptation in General. 175 

stimulations. If this worked alone, every change in the 
environment would weed out all life except those organ- 
isms which by accidental variation reacted already in the 
way demanded by the changed conditions — in every case 
new organisms showing variations, not in any case new 
elements of life-history in the old organisms. In order to 
the latter, we would have to conceive one of two things : 
either, first, an innate capacity of the organism to antici- 
pate and be ready for new conditions ; or second, some 
modification of the old reactions in an organism through 
the influence of new conditions, in such a way that this 
modified reaction serves to retain the desirable stimula- 
tions of the new environment, while the old ways of 
reacting do not The first of these two conceptions might 
be realized in turn by either of two alternatives : first, by 
heredity ; and second, by the special creation of each 
organism for its peculiar environment. But the first of 
these, heredity, is excluded by our hypothesis that we are 
at the beginning of the phylogenetic series. The ques- 
tion would remain: How did the ancestors come to be 
adapted ? And the second calls upon us to give up the 
conception of phylogeny altogether. We are, accordingly, 
left to the view that the new stimulations wrought by 
changes in the environment, themselves modify the reac- 
tions of an organism in such a way that these modified 
reactions serve to hold or repeat the new stimulations as 
far as they are good, and further, negatively, in such a 
way that the former reactions become under the new con- 
ditions less useful or positively damaging. 

It may be said that the earlier application of natural 
selection directly to the salvation of organisms meets this 
case also, provided organic forms arise by variations 



1 76 The Theory of Development. 

which are suited to react to the new environment. And it 
is possible to hold, I think, that phylogenetic progress 
from father to son is secured in that way : a point which 
has further discussion below. But the facts show, at any 
rate, that individual organisms do acquire new adaptations 
in their lifetime, 1 and that is our first problem. If, in 
solving it, we find a principle which may also serve as a 
principle of race development, then we may possibly use 
it against the ' all-sufficiency of natural selection/ or in its 
support. 

The one kind of organic process which would accom- 
plish the selection of reactions in an organism's life-history 
is the one which we actually find — which is to say that 
our theory waits as it should upon facts. There is a 
process by which the theatre of the application of natural 
selection is transferred from the outside relations of the 
organism, its relations to its environment, to the inside 
relations of the organism. It takes the form of the func- 
tional adjustment of the life processes to variations in its 
own motor responses, so that beneficial reactions are se- 
lected from the entire mass of responses. 

This process is — to state my point before discussing 
it — the neurological analogue of the hedonic consciousness ; 
and the two aspects in which the happy variation shows 
itself in the consciousness of the higher organisms are 
pleasure and pain. These points may be summed up 

1 I know a further objection may be made, and it may be as well to state it 
here, while reserving its discussion for a later place (§ 3 of this chapter). 
It may be said that even in the life of the individual new actions are not 
acquired; they simply serve in the individual to show the details of the varia- 
tion which the individual has got by inheritance. On that view the new 
functions do not secure gains for the following generation, but only put in 
evidence the variations already secured over the earlier generation. 



Organic Adaptation in General. 177 

for discussion in the general proposition : the life-history 
of organisms involves from the start the presence of the 
organic analogue of the hedonic consciousness. 

From what has been said it is clear that, in order to 
life-history in an organism, it must have in its central 
processes not only the facile function required by habit- 
ual discharge, but also some means of anticipating new 
stimulations, and so of utilizing them to its own advantage. 
The empirical analysis of pleasure and pain states requires 
the recognition of these two facts, on any theory of the 
hedonic consciousness, i.e., first, pleasure accompanies 
normal psycho-physical process, or its advancement by 
new stimulations which are vitally good ; and second, pain 
accompanies abnormal psycho-physical process, or the an- 
ticipation of its being brought about by new stimulations 
which are vitally bad. 1 This is generalized in the princi- 
ples, current since Bain insisted upon them, that pain is 
indicative of a physiological process which is inhibitory of 
the function which occasions the pain, and pleasure, on the 
other hand, advances its corresponding function ; although, 
as I aim to show in the following pages, the formula- 
tion of Bain requires important modifications. In a later 
place I speak further of the rise of consciousness as this 
view seems to implicate it. 2 

Advantage has now been seen to lie in reactions by 
which certain stimulations are retained or repeated and 
certain others avoided. Now the former are the reac- 
tions to stimulations which give pleasure, the latter reac- 
tions to those which give pain. The general scheme of 
Meynert, which identifies the pleasure-giving process in 

1 Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, II., Chaps. V., XI. (in substance). 

2 Cf. § 4 of this chapter. 

N 



178 The Theory of Development. 

some way with that of outreaching movements, and the 
pain-giving process in some way with that of withdrawing 
movements, — expansions on the one hand, and contractions 
on the other, — affords, disregarding details which I need 
not now dwell upon, support to this requirement. 1 Richet 
expresses the general facts very clearly; beginning with 
pain, he says, " there takes place a series of general move- 
ments of flexion, as if the animal wished to make itself 
smaller and to offer less surface to the pain. . . . With 
man, as with all other animals, we find the same general 
movements of flexion and extension, corresponding to feel- 
ings of pain and pleasure. Pleasure corresponds to a 
movement of spreading out, dilatation, extension; on the 
contrary, in pain we draw back, shut ourselves up, by 
general movements of flexion." 2 

It may be objected, however, that this does not meet the 
need of anticipating adjustment; and such an objection to 
Meynert's own view is, I think, well taken. Admitting the 
truth of the theory of Meynert, however, as far as it goes, 
and its essential conformity to the requirements of a true 
theory of motor development, we may further find from 
the two correspondences mentioned the element which is 
still lacking, and which can only be supplied by an ade- 
quate theory of the physical basis of pleasure and pain. 

If development is by repetition, and if repetition can be 
secured only by a variation which brings about what I 
have designated above a 'circular reaction,' or one which 



1 Popul'dr-wisscnschaftliche Vortrage, pp. 41 ff. Meynert's theory has 
recently been given some experimental support by Miinsterberg, Beitr'dge zur 
exper. Psych., heft 4. For the detailed treatment of such so-called ' Organic 
Imitations,' see below, Chap. IX. 

2 V Homme et V Intelligence, p. 9, quoted by Ward. 



Organic Adaptation in General, 179 

repeats or retains its own stimulation, then a new stimulus 
can be accommodated to only within the limits inside of 
which the organ can prepare itself, on the basis of former 
processes, to bring about such a reaction as will tend to 
retain this kind of stimulus for itself. This is accom- 
plished, in the whole range of motor accommodations from the 
protozoa which swarm to the light to the most difficult feat 
of the acrobat, by what I may generalize under the phrase 
1 law of excess ' ; it is an application within the organism of 
the principle upon which the natural selection of particu- 
lar organisms is secured — the principle commonly known 
as ' over-production.' But, generally, the law of ' excess ' 
may be stated somewhat as follows : the accommodation of 
an organism to a new stimulation is secured, apart from 
happy accidents, by the continued or repeated action of that 
stimulation, and this repetition is secured, not by the selec- 
tion beforehand of this stimulation nor by its fortuitous 
occurrence, alone, but by the proximate reinstatement of it by a 
discharge of the energies of the organism, concentrated as far 
as may be for the excessive stimulation of the organs most 
nearly fitted by former habit to get this stimulation again} 

Assuming that such a supplement to the current psy- 
cho-physical theories of pleasure-pain is necessary, and 
that the details are left open of what the actual cellu- 
lar processes are by which this ' excess discharge' is 
secured, our task is to explain and justify this law of Ex- 
cess. This I shall endeavour to do, dividing the cases 
of Accommodation or Adaptation into three heads, — 

1 The negative of concentration or its reverse supplies the conditions of re- 
treat from a damaging stimulation — I suppose some form of draining, with 
Darwin's * antithetic ' motor action and Meynert's Abwehrbewegungen. I shall 
develop only the positive side. 



i86 The Theory of Development. 

the word ' adaptation ' being used as in biology for the 
process by which accommodation is secured. We will 
have to show that the three certain stages of adaptation 
are brought under the formula of ' organic selection ' by 
means of the auxiliary principle of ' Excess.' To make 
these three spheres plain to psychologists we may desig- 
nate them as, first, ' biological adaptations ' (the sensitive 
plant, the curling tendril of the vine, heliotropism, the 
behaviour of the brainless frog) ; second, the reactions of 
consciousness when so-called 'reflex attention' dominates 
(animals without their hemispheres, the learning of in- 
fants and idiots short of voluntary effort) ; third, the con- 
scious selection of ends and their pursuit by volition 
(voluntary attention, cortical action, 'conduct'). These 
three forms of adaptation are treated in the course of this 
work under the headings, respectively, of ' Organic Imi- 
tation,' 'Conscious Imitation,' and 'Volition.' If suc- 
cessfully made out, this will present to us a theory of 
unity in the motor life, and an addition to the evolution 
theory acceptible to psychologists. 

Before proceeding further, however, it may be well to 
state the theory hitherto propounded and advocated by 
other psychologists, as well as by biologists, and to exam- 
ine it in view of the requirements now indicated; this 
comparison will also serve to bring out my own positions 
more clearly. 

§ 2. Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 

It is clear that we are led to two relatively distinct 
questions : questions which are now familiar to us when 
put in the terms covered by the words ' phylogenesis ' and 
'ontogenesis.' First, how has the development of organic 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation, 181 

life proceeded, showing constantly, as it does, forms of 
greater complexity and higher adaptation ? This is the 
phylogenetic question ; and as we should expect, this is 
the question over which biologists have had their most 
earnest and lasting controversy. This is also the only 
question which has interested biologists. But the second 
question, the ontogenetic question, is of equal importance : 
the question, How does the individual organism manage 
to adjust itself better and better to its environment ? How 
is it that we, or the brute, or the amoeba, can learn to 
do anything ? This is the question which has interested 
psychologists — as far as they have shown interest at all 
in genetic theories. 

This latter problem is the most urgent, difficult, and 
neglected question of the new genetic psychology. How 
can an organism, whether with or without consciousness, 
ever, under any circumstances, get a new and better- 
adapted function ? This is the inquiry which I wish to 
take up first, describing the only view which has much 
currency and criticising it. For in answer to this question 
there is practically only one theory in the field, that of 
Bain, in his latest formulation of which he shows its con- 
formity to evolution requirements. It is based upon Mr. 
Spencer's earlier theory, but has certain modifications 
which Mr. Bain states in a passage which I quote below. 
I shall hereafter refer to the view now described as the 
' Spencer-Bain theory.' 

Mr. Bain's view is this: the organism is endowed with 
spontaneous movement, a certain spontaneity of action 
which must be assumed. Certain of these spontaneous 
movements happen by ' lucky chance ' to succeed in bring- 
ing the organism into some special adjustment, better 



1 82 The Theory of Development. 

exposure, better protection, easier function, etc. ; these 
movements are accompanied by pleasure. The pleasure 
lingers in the consciousness of the creature in connec- 
tion with the memory of the particular movement which 
brought it; and the memory of the pleasure serves to 
incite the creature to execute the same movement again, 
whenever the same external conditions present themselves. 
The repetition thus secured serves to fix the new adjust- 
ment as a permanent acquisition on the part of the 
organism. 

It is evident that on this view of adaptation, Mr. Bain 
assumes consciousness with pleasure and pain in the 
organism and also assumes an association between the 
sense of the pleasure and the sense or mental picture of 
the movement which brought the pleasure. A third sup- 
position should also be especially noted, — because it is 
usually so tacit an assumption as to go quite unremarked, 
— namely, that the circumstances or environment remain 
sufficiently constant to enable the creature to use the 
association between the pleasure and the movement. He 
must have various movements stimulated over again as 
before, and among them the one which before gave the 
pleasure, in order that the pleasant memory of this par- 
ticular one may be suggested along with the other possible 
ones. Granting these assumptions, we have a means of 
' selecting ' the useful movement — what I have called 
* organic selection.' 

The order of the * factors of adaptation,' as we may call 
the elements involved in Bain's scheme, is clearly this : 
random movement, chance-adaptation, pleasure, memory 
of pleasure associated with memory of movement, adapted 
movement. In this order I wish to note especially the 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 183 

distinction between adaptive movement, i.e., the move- 
ment which by chance secures the adaptation, and adapted 
movement, i.e., the movement which follows by association 
with the pleasure which is recalled in memory. 

Passing now to Mr. Spencer's theory, we find a purely 
physiological construction. 1 He supposes that originally 
simple contractility of protoplasm leads to a diffused con- 
tractile discharge throughout the mass; this results in 
random movements of great variety. Some of these move- 
ments are by chance more adaptive than others, and by this 
fact a larger draught of energy tends to concentrate itself 
upon the channels of discharge which carry out these 
movements. This wave of 'heightened nervous energy* 
fixes an anatomical 'path of least resistance,' which so 
comes to represent the habits and permanent adaptations 
of the organism. 

The coincidence of these two views may be best ex- 
pressed in the terms of one of the authors. Mr. Bain 
writes : 2 " My leading postulates — Spontaneity, the Con- 
tinuing of an action that gives pleasure, and the Contiguous 
growth of an accidental connection — are all involved in 
Mr. Spencer's explanation of the development of our activ- 
ity. . . . The spontaneous commencement is expressed by 
him as a diffused discharge of muscular energy {Psychology, 
Vol. I., p. 544). He considers that as nervous structures 
become more complicated, every special muscular excite- 
ment is accompanied by some general muscular excitement. 
Along with the concentrated discharge to particular mus- 
cles, the ganglionic plexuses inevitably carry off a certain 
diffused discharge to the muscles at large ; and this dif- 

1 Spencer, Princ. of Psychology, I., §§ 227 ff. 

2 Emotions and Will, 3d ed., 1888, pp. 318 f. 



184 The Theory of Development. 

fused discharge may lead to the happy movement suitab\e 
to some emergency. 

" This is the doctrine of Spontaneity in a very contracted 
shape; too contracted in my judgment for the requirements 
of the case. I have adverted to the inferiority of the dif- 
fused wave accompanying a central process, whether active 
or emotional, such as is here assumed. If another source 
of chance muscular movements can be assigned, and if that 
source presents advantages over the diffused discharge, we 
ought to include it in our hypothesis. . . . Mr. Darwin 
expresses what is tantamount to the spontaneity of move- 
ment thus : ' When the sensorium is strongly excited, the 
muscles of the body are generally thrown into violent 
action.' ' Involuntary and purposeless contractions of the 
muscles of the chest and glottis, excited in the above 
manner, may have first given rise to the emission of vocal 
sounds' {Expression, pp. 82, 83). This is spontaneous 
commencement under circumstances of strong excitement ; 
but I have endeavoured to show that excitement is unnec- 
essary, and that spontaneity is a fact of the ordinary 
working of the organs. 

" The second indispensable requisite to voluntary acqui- 
sition, as well as to the consolidation of instinctive powers, 
is some force that clenches and confirms some successful 
chance coincidence. Mr. Spencer's view of this operation 
is given thus : ' After success will immediately come pleas- 
urable sensations with an accompanying large draught of 
nervous energy towards the organs employed.' ' The lines 
of communication through which the diffused discharge 
happened in this case to pass have opened a new way to 
certain wide channels of escape ; and consequently they 
have suddenly become lines through which a larger quan- 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 185 

tity of molecular motion is drawn, and lines which are so 
rendered more permeable than before.* 

" Here is assumed the Law of Pleasure and Pain. 
Pleasure is accompanied by heightened nervous energy, 
which nervous energy finds its way to the lines of commu- 
nication that have been opened up by the lucky coinci- 
dence. There is assumed as a consequence the third of 
the above postulates — the contiguous adhesion between 
the two states, the state of feeling and the appropriate 
muscular state. The physical expression given by Mr. 
Spencer to this result is, I have no doubt, correct — 'the 
opening up of lines of discharge that draw off large 
amounts of molecular motion.' " 

Bain's three postulates, as here summed up by himself, 
touch the inevitable requirements of a theory, in my opin- 
ion, as will be seen from the foregoing pages. For there 
are three requirements ; first, to get movements (his ' spon- 
taneity,' as a substitute for Spencer's ' diffused discharge ' 
and Darwin's ' purposeless contractions'); second, to get 
selections made from these movements (his ' accidental 
success,' of certain movements); and third, 'some force 
that clenches and confirms some successful chance coinci- 
dence ' (' pleasure and pain,' identified with Spencer's 
"heightened nervous energy which finds its way to the 
lines of communication that have been opened up by the 
lucky coincidence "). 

But it is evident that the truth — if it be true — of ' spon- 
taneity ' in developed organisms does not invalidate or even 
supersede Spencer's ' diffused discharge ' ; for the phylo- 
genetic explanation of spontaneity — the question how did 
spontaneity itself arise — must rest on some such hypoth- 
esis as Spencer's theory of discharge, or of contractility 



1 86 The Theory of Development. 

in response to stimulation. So we may pass that postulate 
over without further question. But the second question 
comes : given movements — by either of these principles, 
both, or neither — how are some of them selected ? Here, 
again, the answer comes from both authors : by chance 
adaptation. Of course, we are told, some of these random 
movements are likely to be more adaptive than others. 
Suppose the creature is suffering for want of food, the 
movements which hit upon food are then the adaptive 
ones. These are then in so far selected. This we may 
admit as most likely. But in how far — again it is asked — 
is the organism able to do them a second time ? How are 
these successful, good, advantageous movements kept up ? 
' Pleasure and pain ' is at once on everybody's lips, Bain's, 
Spencer's, et al. The adaptive movement gives pleasure : 
this secures the repetition. But, yet again, how ? Evi- 
dently by association, we are told. The lucky movement 
gives pleasure ; it is done again to secure the pleasure 
again, for of all the movements which are incipiently stim- 
ulated by the environment, that one which is remembered 
as having given pleasure, that one is done again. The 
movements must be incipiently stimulated, that is, the 
environment must be pretty constant, as was said above, 
for otherwise we may say : for an association one term 
must be given ; either the pleasure to bring up the move- 
ment, or the movement to bring up the pleasure. We 
must have the presence of the movement in some kind of 
possibility, in order to get the sense of the pleasure to be 
derived from doing it. Here Mr. Spencer's theory, on the 
organic side, gives us an answer ; and Bain, as it seems to 
me, adopts it as a supplement, in the quotation made above 
from his third edition, directly from Spencer. " Here is 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 187 

assumed," says Bain, " the ' law of pleasure and pain.' 
Pleasure is accompanied by heightened nervous energy, 
which nervous energy finds its way to the lines of 
communication that have been opened up by the lucky 
coincidence." 

But now we reach a point in the development of this 
theory at which difficulties begin to appear. It is evident 
that two cases are possible in the matter of the environ- 
ment : the case in which the stimulus calling out the lucky 
movement continues to act, and the case in which this 
stimulus stops acting. Suppose it be light — sunlight — 
falling on a protozoon, and a movement results which 
exposes the creature better to the light, and this exposure 
is beneficial and pleasurable. It is clear that the sunlight 
may continue upon it, and so keep up its good influence ; 
or, on the other hand, the sun may draw away and be 
succeeded by gloom. This theory, it is evident, makes 
the continuance of the adaptation dependent upon the 
continuance or repetition of the stimulus. What good to 
the organism to remember that it elongated itself by 
chance upward, let us say, in the light, and that this 
gave pleasure, if there be no longer any light in which to 
elongate itself upward ? If it do it in the dark, it again 
exposes itself to chance; for such an elongation in the 
dark may be the very reaction which will destroy it. So 
all adaptive reactions on this theory can be adapted reac- 
tions — real adjustments, acquisitions — only in conditions 
of relative regularity and frequency of stimulation. 

This theory, therefore, leaves the organism to the risk 
of getting repetitions of stimulus by accident; just as it 
got the adaptation by the chance of a lucky movement, 
so it can keep it only by the chance of the recurrence of 



1 88 The Theory of Development. 

the stimulus. The organism waits the second time upon 
chance, just as it did the first time. The postulate that 
pleasure from the lucky movement is the agent of adapta- 
tion, succeeds, therefore, only when the environing agencies 
of stimulation are regular and constantly available. 

This necessity of regularity of conditions is put by 
Mr. Joseph Jastrow in these words : " The existence of 
habits implies an environment sufficiently constant to re- 
peatedly present to the organism the same or closely simi- 
lar conditions." * And writers generally assume, if they 
do not say, that the organism is developed by the repeti- 
tion of stimulations which storm it, by the laws of their 
own action, coming to act upon it while it remains in its 
place to be acted upon. Complexity of adaptation is then 
secured by the compounding of the reactions which are 
sustained in this way. 2 

Again, another question must be asked in regard to 
the postulate of ' heightened nervous energy ' which both 
Spencer and Bain make the physiological counterpart of 
pleasure. The pleasure resulting from the first acciden- 
tally adaptive movement, issues in a heightened nervous 
discharge toward the organs which made the movement, a 
discharge which finds its way to the same channels as 
before, and so makes it likely that the same movement will 
be repeated, the external conditions remaining the same. 
By these discharges this movement gets, of course, a 
better chance of being performed on subsequent occasions. 
So the organism fixes its adaptations. 

Let us accept this and say that something equivalent to 

1 Popular Science Monthly, November, 1892. 

2 More is said of this compounding tendency, below, Chap. VIII., § 4. 
Cf. Spencer's exposition of it, loc. cit. y Vol. I., §§ 231 ff. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 189 

' heightened nervous energy ' alone can explain the repeti- 
tion of reactions which are both useful and pleasurable. 
We may call this, then, for convenience, the principle of 
1 Motor Excess/ and say that pleasure and pain can be 
agents of accommodation and development only if the 
one, pleasure, carry with it the phenomenon of ' motor 
excess,' and the other, pain, the reverse — probably some 
form of inhibition or of antagonistic contraction. 

Our question then is this : What is the reason that the 
movements which are accidentally more adaptive than 
others, give pleasure ? Is there anything in one move- 
ment, as such, more than another, that it should give 
pleasure ? How can it matter to the protozoon, for exam- 
ple, whether it elongate itself upward, or flatten itself 
downward, that it should feel better in one case than in 
the other ? 

The only answer evidently is, that the pleasure is not in 
the movement in itself but in what the movement gets for 
the organism. The protozoon may elongate itself upward 
without pleasure possibly in the dark, or with positive pain. 
The plant may turn upward only in the light (heliotro- 
pism), and then downward only in the dark (geotropism), 
to show its adaptations. It is the sunlight which the 
creature gets from its elongation upward which gives the 
pleasure. 1 

Yet that the current theory, as held by psychologists, 
makes the first adaptive movement accidental, and the 
pleasure which serves as agent of accommodation to result 

1 A case which fulfils the details of this illustration is to be found in certain 
shell-fish (muscles) which respond variably to light and shade. Some species 
withdraw when shadows are thrown upon them; certain others withdraw when 
light falls on them; and yet others respond by contraction to both light and 
shade. See Nagel, in Biol. Ccntralb., XIV., 1894, p. 385. 



190 The Theory of Development. 

only from that movement, may be seen from such state- 
ments as the following from Hoffding, who accepts Bain's 
postulate of spontaneity in developed organisms. He 
says : " There may be accommodation even before con- 
sciousness by means of reflex movement. In this, move- 
ment is not immediately brought about by the internal 
state, but by a stimulus from the external world, or from 
a part of the organism." 1 

As soon as it is criticised this bald position becomes 
irrational, as every one will admit : for the action of 
the sunlight it is which stimulates the organic and vital 
processes, aids nutrition, sets the organism into its life 
rhythms, etc. This is universally the case. It is what the 
organism gets by the movements which minister to its life ; 
that is the original pleasure-giving thing, not the mere 
fact of one movement rather than another. 

And yet, as evident as this is, I cannot find it any- 
where clearly brought out in the literature of this topic. 
It may have been taken for granted by every one, we 
could well believe, except that when we come to generalize 
this view, we find that the theory of adaptation takes on 
a meaning very different from that usually understood. 
If it is the organism's stimulations, such as food supply, 
contact with the oxygen of the air, equilibrium under the 
action of gravity, etc. — if it is such things which give the 
organic bases of pleasure — then these it is which serve 
to bring about the motor excess discharge which pro- 
duces the abundance and variety of movements necessary 
to selection. But if so again, then we do not need the 
first accidentally adaptive movement to give pleasure, and 
through pleasure so to secure the excess discharge. 

1 Outlines of Psychology, p. 311. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 191 

The old theory turns the case completely over and 
stands it on its head. 1 We reach, in fact, from this con- 
sideration a new construction in which our organism begins 
with a susceptibility to certain organic stimulations, such 
as food, oxygen, etc. ; these when present give pleasure, 
the pleasure is, physiologically considered, a heightened 
vitality in the central nuclear processes ; this heightened, 
central vitality issues in a motor excess discharge ; from the 
resulting abundant and varied movements of this excess 
discharge those are selected which bring more of these 
vital stimulations again; and these finally keep up the 
vitality of the organism, and by the repeated excess move- 
ments, provide for constantly progressive adaptations. 

This position, it is plain, does not rule out the old inter- 
pretation entirely — the view that it is the sense of acci- 
dentally adapted movements which gives pleasure. For in 
saying that it is the stimulus or sense process which gives 
pleasure, according as it is vitally beneficial or not, I do 
not rule out any kind of stimulus or sense process. Mus- 
cular sensation — the sense process of accomplished move- 
ment — takes its place as one such process among others, 
and a very important one. In as far as the exercise of 
muscle in high organisms, or the mere fact of contrac- 
tility itself in the lower, is vitally good, in so far it also 
gives pleasure, and this pleasure serves to issue in excess 
discharge to the same regions again. But this is a very 
different view from that which says that the excess move- 
ments corresponding to pleasure all follow from accidental 
movements which are lucky. 

The Spencer-Bain view seems then to say that one 
kind of sense process, that which reports movements, and 

1 Cf. Spencer, loc. cit., I., p. 545. 



192 The Theory of Development. 

movements only of a particular kind — those which happen 
to be adaptive by chance — that this one kind of sense 
process gives pleasure, while all others do not. But why 
should this be ? All processes of stimulation going into 
the organic centres ought to follow the same law. If one 
kind, in as far as it serves to heighten vitality, for that reason 
brings up the energies of the reacting centre to the pitch 
of a { heightened nervous discharge,' why should not any 
other stimulating process which serves to heighten vitality 
do the same thing ? And when we come to press the 
case more closely and ask why it is that only one class of 
movements — a logical class merely, those which happen 
to be adaptive — do in reality so act, the only practical 
criterion is after all, on this theory, just that which I 
am urging, i.e., that those movements only are adaptive 
which secure a new element of sense process, such as 
light, chemical action, food stimulus, etc., in addition to 
the ordinary advantage of movement itself which all move- 
ments, qua movements, have in common. 

So far, I have spoken of pleasure, but the same holds, 
verbis mutatis, of pain. Let us ask this question : Where 
in the entire series of events constituting a reaction accom- 
panied by pain — stimulus, central process, movement 
— does the pain come in, before or after the first adapted 
movement, i.e., the movement that has an inhibiting influ- 
ence somehow upon its own further performance ? The 
whole phraseology of Spencer and Bain would serve to 
make us think that it came in only after a movement so un- 
lucky as to be ill-adapted, the pain being part of the effect 
of the movement, so that, by the memory of the pain thus 
got, the movement is in future inhibited. The pain got 
from the movement serves in memory to warn us not to 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 193 

repeat the movement} But here I take issue blankly, con- 
tending that it comes in by and in the stimulus and before 
its discharge in movement, warning us not to move so as to 
repeat that stimulus. It is by this * warning,' — which is 
in organic terms an actual lowering of vitality and conse- 
quent dampening of movement, or production of contrary 
movements, — by this the organism tends to avoid the 
repetition of this stimulation. 

Let us take for scrutiny the customary illustration — 
the one which James uses, for example, in explaining the 
* Meynert scheme ' of nervous action. A child thrusts 
his finger in a candle-flame, and is burned : he thrusts no 
more, but shrinks. Here the doctrine of Spencer, Bain, 
and many others, seems to make the function of the pain 
the inhibition of the thrusting movement, as itself unde- 
sirable. But surely the case is very different. Is this 
movement in itself undesirable ? Is it not undesirable 
only under these or similar circumstances ? The inhibiting 
effect and the pain are brought about by the burn, and 
the recurrence of that — that is the thing to be pre- 
vented. The thrusting movement is a mere incident. 
Suppose the candle is brought up against the child in- 
stead of the reverse : it then shrinks just the same. But 
in this case there has been no forward movement giving 
a pain, by the memory of which, on the theory in ques- 
tion, the shrinkage or stoppage of thrusting is caused. 

1 In support of this see Spencer, Prin. of Psych., Vol. I., §§ 227 f., § 232, 
§ 237. Bain's view is seen in the quotation given above. Dr. Ward seems to 
be clear of this criticism, as regards the function of the pain-process, as actu- 
ally issuing in movements which secure pleasure or bring less pain. I can get 
no consistent conception, however, from Ward, since he implicates attention 
even when, by express claim, he is discussing ' only the original evolution.' — 
Encycl. Brit., Art. ' Psychology,' p. 73. 

O 



194 The Theory of Development. 

No doubt the child has a habit of shrinking from pain- 
causing things ; but what I claim is just this, that it is 
pain-causing things, not painful feeling movements, which 
it has acquired this habit in reference to. 

So far therefore, let us bear clearly in mind, our out- 
come is this : we accept from the Spencer-Bain theory the 
fact of adaptation by selection from excessive movements, 
and also the view that the forerunner or cause of these 
excessive movements is a central process which is the 
organic analogue of pleasure; 1 but we raise an objection 
to that theory which seems to us insuperable: The objec- 
tion that it makes this pleasure, and through it all adapta- 
tion, result from one kind of sense-stimulus, that of the 
organism's own contraction, and not from others, with no 
ground whatever for this discrimination against the ordi- 
nary stimulations of the environment, such as light, heat, 
oxygen, food-supply, etc., which are most vitally necessary 
for all growth, from the first. 

To obviate this objection we must hold that all stimula- 
tions which heighten vitality give the organic basis of 
pleasure and by this issue in excessive movements. This 
seems natural, easy, and in fact inevitable. This is what 
my theory does. It says : given any reason for a better 
central organic state of things, this better state of things 
shows itself, by the law of dynamogenesis, in the greater 
ease, facility, and variety of movements, which facilitate 
the adjustments and so the adaptations of the organism. 

This is the first innovation which the theory which I 
have sketched above proposes. While securing the better 
basis for adaptation generally, however, it does not inter- 

1 Omitting the negative or pain side, which, apart from details, proceeds in 
a parallel way. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 195 

fere with the function of pleasure which Bain desiderates 
— i.e., " some force that clenches and confirms, some suc- 
cessful chance coincidence" 1 [of movement]. For as I 
have said, the successful chance coincidence would still 
give pleasure and the same association would hold between 
this pleasure and the particular movement which secured it. 
And under regular conditions of stimulation this associa- 
tion would suffice to draft off the increased energy of the 
pleasure process into the channels of the movement which 
is associated with the pleasure ; for the organic basis of 
an association must be some kind of a connective pathway 
between the seats of the things which are associated. 

A later utterance of Bain's comes nearer, as far as I am 
sure that I understand it, to the recognition of my view 
of the general value of pleasure and pain in the theory of 
organic accommodation. He says in his last edition : 2 
"The law that a movement bringing pain tends to be 
arrested, and a movement bringing pleasure to be pro- 
moted, is with some plausibility referred to a general prin- 
ciple of nervous action, whereby, seeing that pleasure is 
in so many cases associated with increase, and pain with 
diminution, of vital energy, there should grow out of this 
circumstance a disposition of pleasure to feed, and of pain 
to sap its own producing energy [by an adaptation of 
movements by which the stimulation giving pleasure is 
retained, on one hand, and that giving pain broken with, 
on the other hand]. There is an undoubted consistency 
between the two sides of our being on this hypothesis" 
[of what I have called an 'imitative ' or 'circular activity ']. 
. . . "The hypothesis in question demands for its ade- 

1 See the quotation from Bain above. 

2 Bain, Senses and Intellect, 4th ed., pp. 328 f. 



196 The Theory of Development. 

quacy a far-reaching, although not incredible or impossible, 
assumption — viz., that the tendency of pleasure, through 
the medium of its physical accompaniments, to heighten 
for the moment the activities of the framework in general, 
somehow finds a way to concentrate upon the specific move- 
ment adapted to the precise case [i.e., adapted to bring the 
organism into continued relation to the pleasure-giving 
stimulus]. This is a very large demand in itself and would 
seem to need a large number of chance experiments [or a 
congenital variation producing a bifurcate division of move- 
ments into ' expanding ' and ' contracting ' respectively] be- 
fore the lucky coincidence is reached. The hypothesis is 
by no means impossible ... its natural place is under 
the hypothesis of Evolution, where it is an important, if 
not indispensable, item." 1 

We now find ourselves introduced to another class of 
facts, which, when interpreted, lead us to another funda- 
mental innovation in the theory of adaptation. 

It is evident that we have been dealing with the ques- 
tion of ontogenetic adaptation so far, the question as. to 
how the individual organism manages to get new adapta- 
tions. Later on I shall ask how the fact of heredity can 
secure the preservation for the species of the adaptations 
secured by the individual. But when we come to view 
the general fact of race adaptation as a whole, the ques- 

1 I think it well to say that Professor Bain in a private letter wrote me that 
he was taking account of my article on 'Imitation' in Mind (January, 1894). 
As he makes no reference, however, to my paper in his book, I may be wrong 
in thinking this to be a passage in which he had my article in view. I may 
even be wrong in thinking that the 'hypothesis' he speaks of is capable of 
being interpreted in the way I have in the additions made by me in brackets 
in the text. In that case, the quotation may be read simply as a further 
exposition of my own views put largely in Professor Bain's words. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 197 

tion which we have just been discussing takes on a further 
interest. 

It has been needful to assume that in the simplest 
organic forms which have contractility, and which are 
able to adapt themselves by their movements to their 
environment — that in such forms the analogue of pleasure 
is a central excess process which discharges itself in 
movement. The question for phylogenesis, then, which 
comes upon us is this : how did this condition of things 
arise, and what form must we hold these excess move- 
ments to take ? 

This question Mr. Bain simply begs. His principle of 
' spontaneity ' is his starting-point ; and he does not even 
see, as I have said above, that spontaneity must itself 
be construed in terms of some form of process which 
accounts for an organism's expenditures of energy in terms 
of such stimulations as its food-processes, etc. Hoffding 
says in reference to the fact of spontaneity : 1 " The inter- 
nal changes, which set free potential energy, must, in their 
turn, depend on the function of nourishment. The spon- 
taneous movement of living creatures is possible only 
because life itself is an uninterrupted process of taking in 
and using up certain constituents. Absolute spontaneity 
would be a consumption of one's own fat." It is evident 
that Bain never brings the genetic point of view into his 
theories, except by the merest attempts at grafting the 
evolution idea upon the trunk of his analysis of the actions 
of developed organisms. 

Mr. Spencer, on the contrary, does attempt to account 
for the rise of the heightened nervous process in indi- 
viduals. He considers it a concentration of the energies 

1 Outlines of Psychology, p. 309. 



198 The Theory of Development. 

of reaction into particular pathways; and so, indeed, it 
must be. But to him, also, it is an ontogenetic acquire- 
ment. It follows upon the first lucky adaptive movement, 
as we have seen above. 

This account we now see to be inadequate, since it 
assumes, as I have shown at length, that when certain 
stimulations are present — stimulations covered by the 
vague word 'adjustments,' which the lucky movement 
happens to strike — these stimulations serve by their 
action to heighten the central processes. So the whole 
question remains quite unanswered as to why any stimula- 
tions do thus heighten the central processes, and so give 
an excess discharge in movement. Of course, the only 
answer is that those processes of stimulation do this to 
which the organism is already accommodated — those 
under the action of which it has come to be what it is — 
its food-supply, oxygen, chemical agents, gravity, contacts, 
etc., etc. 

The general fact of adaptation by chance adjustments 
occurring among excessive diffused movements is, of 
course, true — that I have exemplified above in my theory 
of the rise of handwriting. 1 What is not accounted for 
on the current theory is just the spontaneous or excessive 
movements, from which the selection is made. These, in 
my view, are due to the heightened central processes 
excited by vitally appropriate stimuli. This seems so ele- 
mentary and simple that it would not be worth while to 
speak further of it were it not for another fact, to which I 
may now revert. 

Biologists find among the first adaptations of the organ- 
isms, the earliest in the phylogenetic series — in the mi- 
1 Chap, v., § 2. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 199 

nutest bacteria, the most formless protozoa, the unicellular 
creatures of a day; in plants, in all life — a certain fun- 
damental difference of movements. All organisms behave 
in two great and opposite ways toward stimulations; they 
approach them, or they recede from them. Creatures 
which move as a whole move toward some kinds of stimu- 
lations, and recede from others. Creatures which are 
fixed in their habitat expand toward certain stimulations, 
and contract away from others. It is very evident that 
if this be true, the very uniformity of the relation entitles 
it to a place in any theory of development. And the 
question at once arises : why is it that we find these two 
well-marked differences in behaviour in each organism, 
whatever its type and place in the scale of animate 
nature ? 1 

Now if we assume this to be a fact in nature — I devote 
an entire chapter further on to the consideration of the 
facts, under the phrase ' Organic Imitation ' — that an 
organism tends to approach, move, strain, toward cer- 
tain stimulations, and away from others, it becomes easy 
to connect the fact with our former account of develop- 
ment, and to hold that the stimulations which the organ- 
ism tends toward are those which heighten its vitality, 
which give it pleasure, and those from which it draws back 
are those whose effect upon it is the contrary — the damag- 
ing, the painful ones. This is on the surface the most 
natural thing in the world for nature to do — to endow her 
creatures with a great power of self-preservation and self- 

1 "Coextensive with the phenomena of excitability — that is to say, with 
the phenomena of life — we find this function of selective discrimination — 
this power of discriminating among stimuli and responding to those which 
are the stimuli to which responses are appropriate." — Romanes, Mental 
Evolution in Animals, p. 51. 



200 The Theory of Development. 

improvement. An organism does not have to wait for a 
pleasure to come along, but after it has once had it, it can 
go out after it ; nor to remain exposed to a pain, but after 
once experiencing it, it can retire with discretion. 

This follows in such simple order from what we have 
found to be the method of adaptation — in each case by a 
movement whose adjustment consists just in its appro- 
priateness to secure a good stimulation — that the facts of 
biology which show this first contrast in movements are 
only what we would expect. And they tend in so far also 
to confirm the earlier view as to the method. 

Coming to interpret this new result, therefore, we see 
that our early random, spontaneous, movements are not 
random or spontaneous at all. The ontogenetic growth 
of the individual at any race stage starts with this fun- 
damental adjustment of movements to the stimulations 
under which the phylogenetic development has so far pro- 
gressed. And it is only a statement of the law of phylo- 
genetic development to say that this antithesis of outward 
movements, expansions, on one hand, and withdrawing 
movements, contractions, on the other, is due to natural 
selection working among organisms ; the first application 
of natural selection spoken of above in my introductory 
sketch of the theory of development. 1 

So when we come to consider phylogeny and ontogeny 

1 I have the authority of Mr. Spencer for making the ability to move toward 
or away from an object a sufficient cue to the operation of natural selection, 
i.e., in the development of the bilateral nervous system and the system of 
antagonistic muscles (Loc. cit., I., § 233). But he entirely fails to see that the 
same thing is done by the minute creatures which swarm to red light and 
away from blue light, although they have no nervous or muscular systems at all. 
Dr. Ward also appeals to natural selection in discussing this subject as follows : 
"At first when only random movements ensue, we may fairly suppose both 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation, 201 

together we find that if by an organism we mean a thing 
merely of contractility or irritability, whose round of move- 
ments is kept up by some kind of nutritive process sup- 
plied by the environment — absorption, chemical action of 
atmospheric oxygen, etc. — and whose existence is threat- 
ened by dangers of contact and what not, the first thing 
to do is to secure a regular supply to the nutritive pro- 
cesses, and to avoid these contacts. But the organism can 
do nothing but move, as a whole or in some of its parts. 
So then if one of such creatures is to be fitter than another 
to survive, it must be the creature which by its movements 
secures more nutritive processes and avoids more danger- 
ous contacts. But movements toward the source of stim- 
ulation keep hold on the stimulation, and movements away 
from contacts break the contacts, that is all. Nature se- 
lects these organisms ; how could she do otherwise ? 

This, too, is consonant with all that we know of growth. 
Increased vitality tends to enlargement, range of move- 
ment, activity, while lessened vitality and organic decay 
tend to the opposite series of effects, shrinking, contraction 
of range, torpidity. 

We only have to suppose, then, that the nutritive growth 
processes are by natural selection drained off in organic 
expansions, to get the division in movements which repre- 
sents this earliest bifurcate adaptation. Then inside of 

that the chance of at once making a happy hit would be small and that the 
number of chances would also be small. Under such circumstances natural 
selection would have to do almost everything and subjective selection almost 
nothing. So far as natural selection worked we should have, not the indi- 
vidual subject making a series of tries and perfecting itself by practice, but 
we should have those individuals whose stuff and structure happened to vary 
for the better, surviving, increasing, and displacing the rest." — Encycl. Brit., 
Art. ' Psychology,' p. 73. 



202 The Theory of Development, 

this group of expansive movements — ' spontaneities ' or 
' heightened discharges ' — it becomes the sphere of onto- 
genetic growth to secure the further refinements of adjust- 
ment which the phenomena of ' excess ' — now identified 
both with pleasurable experience in consciousness and with 
motor discharges giving out-reaching movements — enables 
the organism to secure. 

Finally, we found the Spencer-Bain theory to make one 
other presupposition. It requires a relatively constant, 
unchanging environment, in order to give the repetitions of 
stimulation which development requires. The organism is 
supposed to be battered, stormed, by repeated -stimulations 
of the same general kinds. In this, the purely biological 
theories of development concur; by which I mean those 
theories which do not call in the pleasure-pain process 
at all, but rely simply upon the repetition of stimulations 
and reactions, and the resulting compounding of processes 
which these repetitions are supposed to give. 

It is now evident that my theory renders the organism 
much less dependent upon such regularity and constancy 
in the environment. Creatures which have, in their own 
method of reaction, a way of reaching after the stimula- 
tions which they need — a way of retaining contact with 
the source of supply, say of food, or oxygen, or sunlight, or 
heat, or of increasing their forces by actually moving 
toward it, these creatures, can, in a measure, find or make 
for themselves the regularities which the environment may 
not guarantee. 1 So, also, can they by their natural capac- 

1 Think, for example, the difference it makes in the possible time required 
for the evolution of sense organs such as the eye, if we allow the organism 
a form of reaction which moves it toward the source of the light stimul- 
ation. Cf. Spencer's doctrine on this point, Psychology, I., §§ 231 f. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation. 203 

ity of withdrawing from what is pain-giving, avoid and 
escape harmful things to which they are, perchance, con- 
stantly exposed. It is possible that the faculty of local 
movement, locomotion, possessed by animals, in contrast 
with plants, is simply a further emphasis of this very 
useful distinction in reactions. This follows, indeed, 
of necessity, when we come to see below, that the sys- 
tem of ' antagonistic ' muscles is a product of just this 
original contrast of reaching and withdrawing move- 
ments. 

When, further, we come to mental development proper, 
in later chapters of this work, we will see that this is 
exactly the method of that highest of all functions of 
accommodation, adaptation by volition. When we will to 
escape that which is brought upon us by the regular laws 
of nature, we simply adopt means of withdrawal from it 
by anticipation ; and, on the other hand, we secure those 
pleasant and beneficial experiences which the environment 
of our lives would not, in itself perhaps, have brought us, 
by willing to go out and find them. 

It is evident from what has now been said, that the 
fundamental difference between my theory and that cur- 
rent among psychologists, concerns th.Q first organic adap- 
tation. On my theory, the first adaptation is phylogenetic ; 
i.e., it is a variation. By the operation of natural selection 
among organisms, those survive which respond by expan- 
sion to certain stimulations of food, oxygen, etc., and by 
contraction to other certain stimulations ; this expansion 
gives, by reason of the new stimulations which it brings 
within range, a heightened central process which is the 
organic basis of the hedonic consciousness ; and this issues 
in the varied excess movements from which the ontoge- 



204 The Theory of Development. 

netic adaptations of the individual organism are selected 
by association, as fitted in turn to perpetuate the stimula- 
tions which give pleasure, and so again to arouse the 
excess process, and so on. 

The current Spencer-Bain theory, on the contrary, holds, 
as I understand it, that the first adaptation is ontogenetic ; 
i.e., it is due to accidental adjustments occurring among 
diffused or spontaneous movements of a single organism, 
these adjustments giving a heightened central process 
which is the organic basis of the hedonic consciousness, 
and which issues again in excess movements from which 
again further adjustments are selected by chance; these 
adjustments all being made permanent by the association 
between the idea of the movements thus giving pleasure, 
and the memories of the pleasure which they give. 

With these criticisms, the outline of the theory of 
development stands out clearly enough, I think. I shall 
now go on to show briefly that the theory would not be 
affected by the truth or falsity of either of the opposed 
views of heredity now so bitterly opposed to each other 
in biological circles. 

§ 3. Development and Heredity. 

No theory of development is complete, in general opin- 
ion, which does not account for the transmission in some 
way, from one generation to another, of the gains of the 
earlier generations, turning individual gains into race 
gains. I wish, therefore, to inquire briefly what treat- 
ment the view of development held above has a right 
to expect from the two current theories of heredity. 

The neo-Darwinians hold that natural selection, operat- 



Development and Heredity. 205 

ing upon congenital variations, is adequate to explain all 
progressive race gains. This theory, therefore, is able to 
dispense with the ontogenetic acquirements of the par- 
ticular organism. It accordingly denies that what an 
individual experiences in his lifetime, the gains he makes 
in his adaptations to his surroundings, can be transmitted 
to his sons. 

This theory, it is evident, can be held on the view of 
development sketched above. For, granting the onto- 
genetic progress required by the Spencer-Bain theory and 
adopted in my own, — the learning of new movements in 
the way which I have called ' organic selection,' — yet the 
ability to do it may be a congenital variation. Indeed, I 
have made the excess process itself, which gives the 
movements from which ' organic selection ' selects the 
fittest, together with the great antithesis of expansions 
and contractions with pleasure and pain, just such vari- 
ations seized upon by natural selection. And all the later 
acquirements of individual organisms may likewise be con- 
sidered only the evidence of additional variations from 
these earlier variations. So it is only necessary to hold 
to a view by which variations are cumulative to secure 
the same results by natural selection as would have been 
secured by the inheritance of acquired characters from 
father to son. Mr. Spencer and others seem to me to be 
quite wide of the mark in saying that the only alternative 
to the inheritance of acquired characters is a doctrine of 
' special creation.' The life history of the mammal embryo 
shows us, as a matter of fact, as we have already seen, a 
single creature going through many of the variations of 
the race series, without giving us the actual life-history of 
the beings which in their lives represented any single one 



206 The Theory of Development. 

of these stages. As Balfour says : 1 " Each organism re- 
produces the variations inherited from all its ancestors, at 
successive stages in its individual ontogeny which corre- 
spond with those at which the variations appeared in its 
ancestors." The embryological record emphasizes the vari- 
ations, not the means by which they were produced, nor 
their detailed organic outcome in particular generations. 2 

The problem which is left on the hands of the neo- 
Darwinian, therefore, is to construct a theory of variations. 
The * why,' the ' how much,' the ' in what direction,' of vari- 
ation — these questions he must answer. And, of course, 
the burden of proof lies on him to show that his adversa- 
ries have not correctly answered the question of ' the how ' 
of variation by their hypothesis of the transmission of 
acquired characters. 

It is not as generally seen, however, that the only way 
that such a theorist can answer these questions is by an 
actual examination of existing variations both as to the 
facts of their existence and of their modes of develop- 
ment. He must recognize all the processes of the devel- 
opment of the individual in order to define the variation 
which rendered these results possible in the life of the 
individual. This is what gives value to the Spencer-Bain 
theory, considered as an attempt to define the actual 
ontogenetic process of adaptation. On the basis of that 
theory we may ask the question, therefore : how can or- 
ganic selection — individual growth in adaptation — be a 
fact? What is the neurological process seen in it and 

1 Comparative Embryology, p. 3. 

2 And this emphasis is made more emphatic, possibly, in the light of the 
* discontinuous variations ' recently discussed by Bateson, and earlier pointed 
out by Galton under the name of ' sports.' 



Development and Heredity. 207 

what kind of congenital variations does the presence of 
this process presuppose ? 

The theory of individual adaptation, accordingly, comes 
first as a matter both of fact and of interpretation, and 
should be treated quite apart from the problem of hered- 
ity. We are justified accordingly, from the point of view 
of the neo-Darwinian theory, in attempting to answer it 
in the preceding pages. 

The same is true also from the point of view of the 
neo-Lamarkian theory of heredity, as is evident; for just 
such examination and interpretation of the facts of indi- 
vidual experience and development supplies on this theory 
the very means and method of interpreting hereditary race 
progress. Granting the inheritance of acquired characters, 
of course the biologist then asks : Well, what has the indi- 
vidual at each stage been able to acquire, and how did he 
acquire it? This is what we have been attempting to 
answer above. 

It is being gradually recognized by biologists that the 
requirements of fact are about equally well served by 
either theory, which means that facts have not yet re- 
futed either theory. Whatever a particular creature may 
be endowed with, he may have got in either way — or in 
both together. Instinct, for example, may be held to 
have a twofold origin ; it may have arisen in some cases 
by the natural selection of creatures having accidental 
reflex adaptations, and in other cases by intelligent adapta- 
tion. And both processes can be construed without sup- 
posing the inheritance of acquired characters; for the 
ability to make intelligent adaptation may be considered 
as itself a variation, and so may the reflex adaptations. 

I should say, therefore, that, supposing the analogue 



208 The Theory of Development 

of the pleasure-pain process is in all cases the actual 
evidence and accompaniment of the excess process from 
whose discharges adaptations of movement are secured, 
then either of two further views may be held. Either on 
one hand the pleasure-pain process is a variation (and with 
it, the actual hedonic consciousness), the environment of 
the individual in each generation simply serving to give it 
scope for special adaptations ; or on the other hand, this 
process itself is an organic selection, a thing acquired by 
the individual in his experience and then transmitted by 
inheritance with the accretions of each generation simi- 
larly acquired. But in either case, the pleasure-pain pro- 
cess is the same and performs the same functions ; both are 
exactly what the facts show them to be. And the hered- 
ity problem may be left to one side. 

In the foregoing pages I have seemed, however, to find 
reason for saying that the pleasure-pain process, with its 
antithesis of outward and inward movements, was due to 
natural selection, that is, that it was phylogenetic in its 
origin. Further considerations may now be adduced quite 
apart from the general question of heredity. We are in 
fact brought here face to face with the question of the 
origin of consciousness, and upon this I shall be able to 
express only very hypothetical opinions. 

§ 4. The Origin of Consciousness. 

The foregoing paragraphs seem to give us some indica- 
tions of the relation of consciousness to the phenomena 
of life. We have found it necessary to hold that the 
physical basis of hedonic consciousness — the fact of 
heightened central vital processes issuing in expansive 



The Origin of Consciousness. 209 

movements — is a variation in primitive organisms of 
phylogenetic origin, rather than an acquisition due to 
adjustment secured in the life-history of particular organ- 
isms. The original bifurcation of movements, as out- 
reaching and retiring, I have described as a phylogenetic 
distinction and product; a variation among the earliest 
contractile forms. Some arose by variation which did 
discharge their increased vitality in expansive movements, 
and by the advantage of it lived longer and propagated 
more. 

It is possible, however, to hold a different view; in 
fact, we have found the ordinary Spencer-Bain theory of 
adaptation doing so. On this view the heightened central 
process is an adaptation secured in the lifetime of the 
creature. On this view, further, it is necessary to suppose 
that all stimulations, including those of nutrition, varied 
in their effects upon the organism from enlargement, ex- 
pansion, etc., in some instances, to diminution, contraction, 
etc., in other instances, in the same organism. Mr. Spen- 
cer does indeed attempt to give a purely mechanical 
deduction of the association between withdrawing move- 
ment and pain, 1 making it arise in the 'experience' of 
uniform contractile tissue. In that case, ontogenetic adap- 
tation precedes phylogenetic, and if we bring in conscious- 
ness at all, we would have in such a creature an association 
between the pleasure of the success of certain expansive 
movements which were also adaptive, and the sense of the 
movements themselves. 

This, it is evident, makes consciousness of pleasure and 
pain arise at some point in the creature's life; just where, 
we have no clear answer from Spencer. But if we say 

1 Spencer, loc. cit., I., § 227. 
P 



210 The Theory of Development. 

that uniform contractile tissue did not have consciousness 
before the heightened process which indicates pleasure, 
and that this heightened process is due in some way to 
accidental adjustments of movement; then consciousness 
must have arisen by means of these adjustments. 

But we have seen that adjustments of movement can 
have no meaning for the organism, except as they bring 
certain vital stimulations. So the rise of consciousness 
after all would seem to be due to the influence of these 
vital stimulations. And when we come to ask why these 
vital stimulations are vital, why they are necessary, that is, 
we appeal at once to the habits — the very constitution of 
the life process itself — all of which must have come to 
the particular organism by heredity. So consciousness 
becomes, after all, in its actual rise a phylogenetic product. 

Looking at it from this phylogenetic point of view, as 
a variation, we find difficulties and certain advantages. 
Romanes, it will be remembered, treats the fact of ' selec- 
tive contraction ' as the ' criterion of mind,' the indication 
of the presence of consciousness 1 ; and, inasmuch as he 
also finds this fact of selective contraction in the lowest 
known living creatures, it would seem in his view to be due 
either to selection, in case we suppose still earlier a uni- 
form contractile tissue, or as a part of the ' general mystery 
of life,' in case we do not. 

The difficulty, however, which he sees to the ' selection ' 
view, he states in this way : " The difficulty is that I began 
by showing it necessary to define mind as the power of 
exercising Choice [selective reaction], and then proceeded 
to define the latter as a power belonging only to agents 
that are able to feel. ... It seems that my conception of 

1 Mental Evolution in Animals, Chap. I. 



The Origin of Consciousness, 211 

what constitutes Choice is in antagonism with my view 
that the essential element of Choice is found to occur 
among organisms which cannot properly be supposed to 
feel. This . . . contradiction is a real one, though I hold 
it to be unavoidable. For it arises from the fact that 
neither Feeling nor Choice appears upon the scene of life 
suddenly. . . . There are two ways of meeting the diffi- 
culty. One is to draw an arbitrary line, and the other is 
not to draw any line at all, but to carry the terms down 
through the whole gradation of the things until we arrive 
at the terminal or root principles. By the time that we do 
arrive at these root principles, it is no doubt true that our 
terms have lost all their original meaning." 

The difficulty is, in short, that we have two horns of a 
dilemma : either (1) Consciousness with feeling of pleasure 
and pain are co-extensive with life ; in which case they 
existed before the selective reactions which are said to be 
the criterion of consciousness. For — to put this alterna- 
tive in terms of my own foregoing explanations — the same 
stimulations of nutrition, etc., which are now said to explain 
the increase of the central processes, upon which conscious- 
ness is based, must have been vital to life before this so- 
called variation arose. Why then did not the uniform liv- 
ing protoplasm, which preceded the variation, itself have 
consciousness ? Or, the second horn of the dilemma, (2), 
Consciousness with feeling of pleasure and pain are quite 
useless appendages to the theory of adaptation and are in 
no way accounted for; since the variation which secures 
the first adaptation, that is, the selective reactions said to 
be the criterion of mind, are simply variations in processes 
of nutrition, etc., which must have existed in earlier living 
matter, if it existed, and may exist in much higher forms 



212 The Theory of Development, 

of giving matter, in which we have no evidence of such a 
thing as feeling of pleasure or pain. 

Romanes thinks it is best to draw no line at all between 
life without and life with consciousness, but to say that as 
we descend in the scale terms like feeling, which imply 
consciousness, are gradually eviscerated of their meaning ; 
and he is probably right. But he does not see that even 
then there are two remaining alternatives. We may say, 
to state one of the alternatives first, that life existed 
before selective reaction; in which case — holding that 
mind is co-extensive with life — he must give up his 
criterion of mind. This, I think, he does substantially, 
adopting, somewhat hesitatingly it is true, the Spencer- 
Bain view of the origin of adaptations by accidental 
movements during the lifetime of early creatures. He 
says : 1 "How are we to explain the fact that the ana- 
tomical plan of a nerve centre . . . comes to be that which 
is needed to direct the nervous stimuli into the channels 
required ? The answer to this question we found to con- 
sist in the property which is shown by nervous tissue to 
grow by use into the directions which are required for 
farther use. This subject is as yet an obscure one, espe- 
cially when the earliest stages of such adaptive growth 
are concerned, but in a general way we can understand that 
hereditary usage, combined with natural selection may have 
been alone sufficient, etc." (italics mine). Furthermore, 
he presents an argument for the ontogenetic view of the 
rise of selective reactions in saying: 2 "It is impossible 
that heredity can have provided in advance for innova- 
tions upon or alterations of its own machinery during the 

1 Loc. cit., p. 60. 

2 Loc. cit., p. 20 f, quoting from his own work on Animal Intelligence. 



The Origin of Consciousness, 213 

lifetime of a particular individual." The inference being 
that if such innovations cannot be provided for by heredity 
(variation) they must be acquired during the lifetime of 
the creatures. This argument is worthy of discussion and 
is taken up again : but it is not necessary to dwell upon 
it here, inasmuch as it does not conflict with the possible 
truth of the second alternative which is still open. 

This second alternative — really a third one in relation 
to the horns of the original dilemma presented to the 
mind of Romanes — is this : we may say that life began 
with selective reaction as part of its original endowment, 
and with consciousness withal, that is, with feelings of 
pleasure and pain. 

This position preserves the criterion of mind, making 
it also the criterion of life, and so assumes an absolute 
phylogenetic beginning of both life and mind in one. 
This seems to me to be required not only by the logic of 
criteria but also by the facts of life. 

In what sense we are able to call this a * variation' 
is, of course, open to dispute. It is certainly a variation 
in nature — this tremendous thing, life, made more tre- 
mendous as being the vehicle of mind. But is it not 
more simple than the other horn of the dilemma; that 
which requires the assumption, first, of life without con- 
sciousness, and then, a little later on, the farther assump- 
tion of consciousness in connection with life ? 

But more positive advantages come, it is to be hoped, 
from the foregoing considerations. It has been shown 
that the theory of biological adaptation cannot dispense 
with a factor which is, from all accounts, — taking biologists 
like Romanes to witness, — the physiological analogue of 
pleasure and pain, and that nowhere can a beginning be 



214 The Theory of Development 

found for this in the life series. When we come further 
to see that all stages of mental accommodation and 
development can be construed as further steps in such 
biological adaptation — a task to which this book is mainly 
devoted — it would require some temerity of dogmatism 
or some strong evidence to the contrary to lead one to 
throw away such an extension of the principle of uni- 
formity in nature. And yet, with the two great excep- 
tions, Spencer and Romanes, I know of no biologists 
approaching the first rank, who have attempted to bring 
the phenomena of mental development — the class of 
facts most open to scrutiny and most important every- 
where in the animal series — and those of organic adap- 
tation, under the terms of a single concept. 

§ 5. Outcome: Habit and Accommodation. 

Returning upon our path we are now able to see that 
two great truths stand out in all development ; two truths 
both of which are based upon the general fact of con- 
tractility or reaction, and which, therefore, take us further 
upon our way. 

The organism tends to repeat what it has already 
done; this all theories of development agree upon, the 
biologists, the disciples of Spencer, the advocates of the 
association theory of Bain, the psychologists. The fact 
of repetition is admitted to be the corner-stone of all 
theories ; and all theories go farther in naming the prin- 
ciple which such repetitions illustrate, the law of Habit. 

The formulation of the principle of habit, however, 
must depend somewhat upon the sort of notion we enter- 
tain of contractility, of the way which the organism takes 



Outcome: Habit and Accommodation, 215 

to get its repetitions. If we hold that habits are distinctly 
due to the repetition of motor discharges, — that is, to the 
second, third, fourth performance of contractions, as the 
Spencer-Bain theory tells us, — then no habit can be formed 
as such, or can be begun to be formed until after a first 
contraction has opened the way for the passage of the 
contracting energy into the same channels of discharge a 
second, third, fourth time. The formulation of the prin- 
ciple of habit on this theory takes on then something of 
this form — its usual form — i.e., Habit expresses the ten- 
dency of an organism to repeat its own movements again 
and again. 

I have said enough, I think, already to show what criti- 
cism ought to be passed on this formulation. It means 
that the organism starts with nothing equivalent to habit, 
with no native tendency to any kind of movement, with 
no teleology in its movements, no ulterior organic ends. 
It further gives no criterion as to what kind of move- 
ments it is desirable the organism should get into the 
habit of performing. It makes the movements necessary 
to the creature's life on a par precisely with all other 
movements, while yet admitting that it is only by appro- 
priate movements that the organism could have got life 
processes at all. It gives the organism no preferences 
for its food, its oxygen, the stimulations in the presence of 
which alone life itself would be possible ; for such prefer- 
ences would have to show themselves as organic tenden- 
cies to some kind of differential movements. 

Coming to supply this lack, as I have endeavoured to do 
in the preceding pages, we find it necessary to consider that 
the repetition of movement is not at all what the organism 
is after, nor indeed is it what the principle of habit rests 



216 The Theory of Development 

upon. It is not true that all movements are ' equal before 
law ' — the law of habit. Movements which cause pain do 
not tend to be repeated. They are exceptions to the law 
of habit, as that is usually formulated. Painful move- 
ments are inhibited, they tend to be reversed, squelched, 
utterly blotted out ; how can this be explained on the fore- 
going formula for habit ? It cannot be explained. And 
yet it is found to be a fact in the lowest living creatures 
that the biologist knows. 

So just as in starting with life we have to start with 
some process characteristic of life, — say nutrition alone, if 
you please, — so we have also by the law of dynamogenesis 
to start with tendencies to movements which are the mani- 
festations of life, and are, in so far, special. And the 
object of these movements is the maintenance of life: 
which is only another expression, as we have found reason 
to believe, for the maintenance of the stimulations neces- 
sary to life. So we reach a new formulation of the 
principle of habit by which it reads something like this : 
Habit expresses the tendency of an organism to keep in 
touch, by means of movement, with beneficial stimulations : 
or if we summarize under a single word the character of 
the movements toward which all habits of the organism 
tend, we may say : Habit expresses the tendency of the 
organism to secure and to retain its vital stimulations. 

On this view, a habit begins before the movement which 
illustrates it actually takes place ; the organism is endowed 
with a habit, if that be not considered a contradiction. Its 
life process involves just the tendency which habit goes 
on to confirm and to extend. The process of habit, having 
as>its end the maintenance of a condition of stimulation, 
is set in train by the initial stimulus. And the discharge 



Outcome: Habit and Accommodation. 217 

of it in the path which again ' hits ' the stimulus is the 
function of this stimulus rather than another, and reflects, 
exactly and alone, the fact that then and there is a stimu- 
lus whose influence upon the vital processes is good. 

Here at the very origin of the things of life, therefore, 
we find the ' circular process,' what I am going on in the 
following pages to call the ' imitation ' process. And the 
law of habit is simply a generalization, all the way through 
the facts of biology and psychology, from the various appli- 
cations of this principle. 

The other great principle, on which the foregoing discus- 
sions serve to throw some light, is that of Accommodation 
as it is best to call it in psychology, adaptation in biology. 
Let us see how it may be put in contrast to that which is 
called habit. 

We have had occasion to ask in detail how an organism 
can accommodate itself, and have already discussed various 
answers in equal detail. Our outcome may be briefly 
stated, apart from the consideration of habit, somewhat in 
this way : An organism accommodates itself, or learns new 
adjustments, simply by exercising the movements which 
it already has, its habits, in a heightened or excessive way ; 
the accommodation is in each case simply the result and 
fruit of the habit itself which is exercised. 

This is clear when we remember that on our new con- 
ception of habit every act prompted by habit is an act of 
attaining a beneficial stimulation or experience : now the 
result of every attainment of a beneficial experience is to 
discharge an excessive pleasure wave of movement from 
which new adjustments are selected by the same criterion ; 
that is, by the enriched stimulations or experiences which 
they in turn secure. So these later adjustments are 



218 The Theory of Development, 

accommodations. Each such accommodation is reached 
simply in the ordinary routine of habit, and is its out- 
come. 

How simple this view is in the whole range of facts 
becomes evident in the notice of various of its applications 
in subsequent chapters. It seems to allow us to make 
nature move smoothly, instead of being compelled, as 
we are so often compelled, to consider a new thing, 
a novelty in nature, an invention, a new adaptation of 
means to end — to consider each of these as involving a 
great wrench of nature from the methods of her usual 
working ! Let us say, once for all, that every new thing 
is an adaptation, and every adaptation arises right out of 
the bosom of old processes and is rilled with old matter. 
Does not the one kind of ' circular ' reaction in which, as 
we now see, habit and accommodation meet on common 
ground, enable us to see how this may be true ? 

Finally, coming once again to the topic of heredity, let 
us restate the objection made by Romanes to the view that 
life may begin with a differential reaction, or that such a 
differential reaction could not be a variation preserved by 
natural selection. He says, in a passage already quoted 
in part : 1 " Does the organism learn to make new adjust- 
ments, or to modify old ones, in accordance with the results 
of its own individual experience ? If it does so, the fact 
cannot be due simply to reflex action in the sense above 
described [i.e., repetitions of old reactions under the law of 
habit] ; for it is impossible that heredity can have provided 
in advance for innovations upon or alterations in its own 
machinery during the lifetime of a particular individual." 

This difficulty, as we saw, led Romanes to throw over 

1 Loc. cit.y p. 20 f. 



Outcome: Habit and Accommodation, 219 

his own criterion of mind, and to hold that all adaptations, 
including those selective reactions which he had made 
characteristic of mind, were reached in the lifetime of 
individuals. Further, this position, if true, would lead 
inevitably to a Lamarckian theory of heredity, which in- 
deed Romanes held ; for if no hereditary variation can pro- 
vide for future adaptations, then no past adaptations can 
have been provided for by variations to which they were 
future, and so all actual adaptations must have arisen by 
use, heredity being solely the bridge of transmission from 
father to son. 

But we are now able to see, from the results we have 
reached, not only that there is a third alternative, but also 
that this statement of Romanes is not true. The third 
alternative is that life began with a habit, the very method 
of which does include a process which provides for the 
continual modification of its own results. 

If we accept this alternative, then I have shown how 
new adaptations can be secured inside of this habit. But 
if we do not. accept it, preferring to believe with Spencer 
in a form of earlier life which showed quite formless and 
diffused contractions, we are able still to see how such a 
pseudo-habit may have come about as a variation. The 
only necessary feature of this variation would be that 
nutrition increase expansive and varied movements; that 
is all. The result would be that the stimulations afford- 
ing nutrition would be hit upon and gained oftener by 
these organisms than by others, and so a habit of get- 
ting greater variety and richness of such stimulations in 
this way would be secured, and new accommodations made 
which would break up the habits transmitted by heredity. 
Would not this be just the state of things which Romanes 



220 The Theory of Development. 

declares impossible? — heredity providing for the modifi- 
cation of its own machinery? Heredity not only leaves 
the future free for modifications, it also provides a method 
of life in the operation of which modifications are bound 
to come, and further, — and this is the most remarkable 
fact in the whole case — it provides that these modifica- 
tions shall take form in the great twofold accommodation 
of movements corresponding to pleasure and pain, thus 
making the very fact of accommodation itself the great 
deep-seated habit of organic life. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Origin of Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

§ I. General View. 

In ordinary usage, the word ' expression ' stands for a 
passibly definite thing. We mean, when we use it, to 
say that the signs, which we see in face, attitude, deport- 
ment, etc., of a man or beast, mean something ; and that 
this meaning is what the mental process or state of the 
individual or creature under observation really is, or what 
he really intends to have us take his state to be. He 
expresses something to me when I gather from certain 
signs about his body, such as those I have mentioned, 
certain facts to be true about his mind or consciousness. 
The phrases, 'facial expression,' 'verbal and rhetorical 
expression,' 'emotional expression/ etc., all have this com- 
mon idea at bottom. 

Just as soon as we have come to ask how expression is 
possible, how it comes that these external signs can be 
trusted to convey the truth about the mind which lies 
within, we see that a whole philosophy of development is 
required to give us an answer ; a philosophy of the devel- 
opment, that is, of mind and body together. It will not 
do to give an explanation simply of one mental state, like 
grief, expressing itself in one group of signs, like weeping ; 
that might be solved by saying that the body had been 

221 



222 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

created for just this use by the mind. But when we come 
to see that all possible mental states have their appropriate 
signs, all in a system, and that each animal consciousness 
has a system of signs*, and all the same system, then we 
have to account not merely for the single cases, but for the 
system, as a system. And this is a very different matter. 

Let us take, for example, the facts of suggestion as 
they have been set forth above. Suggestion we found 
to involve a gradual series of changes, transitions, stages, 
in the action, behaviour, attitudes of the child, according 
as he experiences changes, transitions, stages of treatment 
and stimulation from his surroundings. All his signs or 
expressions are very gradually formed out of previous 
signs. And no one of them can be understood except 
when considered in relation to those which went before. 
They all, in short, constitute a developing system and 
represent the mind also, as it is also considered as a 
developing system. 

And, again, if we did not know beforehand how a par- 
ticular experience would manifest itself in the system of 
signs, the signs simply as such would have no meaning 
whatever to us ; they would not be signs of anything. 
Suppose I observe the movements of a complicated ma- 
chine, going on in a series, — a machine which I do not 
understand. Its movements are not signs or expressions 
to me of anything. They really are signs, however, 
expressions of the plan of action of the machine, stages 
in the idea or state of consciousness of the designer, which 
the machine embodies. And as soon as I understand the 
machine, which means as soon as I have the same state 
of consciousness or idea that he had, then the movements 
in their series or system do become signs, real expressions 



The Theory of 'Emotional Expression! 223 

to me. I must be then actually introduced into the same 
system as the idea and the machine, in order to find what 
the expressions mean. 

Looking at the child's expressions again, we see that 
they are expressions to us only because we are in the 
same system, — the human, the life system, — with the 
child. I have gone through the same systematic evolu- 
tion of signs that he is going through. So the question 
of the origin of expression again widens itself out mag- 
nificently. It stands for an answer thus : not only why 
do the child's expressions — mind and body together — 
develop on such a system, but also why do all of us who 
understand the signs, — man, child, beast, — find our- 
selves in the same system of signs intelligible and usable 
by us all. How can we account for a great organic mind 
system in the world, and with it how account for its 
organic embodiment in the system of signs which we 
call expression ? 

This, it is evident, makes expression a function of 
organic evolution, and really identifies the science of 
expression with the great branch of biological 'science 
called Morphology. For signs of functions are always 
shapes of organs, temporary or permanent, and a system 
of shapes is always a system of permanent signs. 

We must accordingly appeal to the theory of develop- 
ment to explain all expressions whatever. 

§ 2. The Theory of 'Emotional Expression! 

Recent discussion has brought out certain great facts 
about the psycho-physics of emotion. 

The outcome of discussion takes form about two or three 



224 Motor Attitudes and Expressions, 

general principles which I am now aiming to state in their 
general bearing upon the origin of ' expression' generally. 
It is evident that the word ' emotion ' may be used in two 
very distinct senses. Emotion may mean a phenomenon 
of instinct purely, the 'emotions' which a baby a year 
old has already got, such as fear, anger, jealousy, sympa- 
thy, etc.; or 'emotion' may designate a phenomenon of 
ideas — something that the baby has yet to get, such as 
the emotions, or sentiments, which involve thought about 
things, contemplation, the more or less adequate under- 
standing of the meanings of things in relation to the per- 
son who is affected. A child, for example, starts at a loud 
noise, and shows all the signs of the emotion of fear ; but 
the adult fears a loud noise only when he has some reason 
to think that it means danger to him. 

If this distinction be true, — and no one denies the dis- 
tinction in fact, apart from the terms which have often 
hopelessly obscured it, — it becomes evident that the ques- 
tion as to what the components of emotional 'expression' 
are, is really a genetic question. All the elements of the 
problem of the genesis of 'expressions' generally — that 
is, of the laws of motor development — must be recognized 
and woven into an adequate theory. 

And when we come to do this, two very important facts 
come before us, of which it is our duty to give some ac- 
count. We have first to ask why each so-called emotion 
has the particular channels of ' expression,' or motor dis- 
charges, which it has ; and second, how it comes that the 
same system of discharges or expressions answer for the 
two kinds of emotion which I have distinguished as, in one 
case, a phenomenon of instinct and, in the other case, a 
phenomenon of ideas. How is it that what I fear because 



The Theory of 'Emotional Expression! 225 

I have some reasonable ground for fearing it, the child also 
fears by instinct, and that I make the same contractions, 
etc., in my state of fear that he does in his ? 

The first of these questions may be called the 'psycho- 
physical ' question of emotion. It asks how the mental 
state which we psychologists call emotion is actually 
related, in any particular case, to the movements, contrac- 
tions, vaso-motor changes, etc., which the body shows 
when it is 'expressing' this emotion. Does the mental 
state, the true emotion, come first, and itself cause the 
bodily expression, as we ordinarily seem to think ? Or is 
the emotion itself the consciousness that these violent 
bodily changes are already taking place ? This is the 
problem which men are now discussing, and it is this 
which I wish to take up in the light of the principles of 
development which have been already laid out in the 
earlier pages. And we can ask ourselves the question in 
somewhat the following form, namely : How could what 
we know as emotion, together with what we know as 
emotional expression, have arisen in the course of devel- 
opment, and what does development teach us of the rela- 
tion of these two things to each other ? 

When, then, we come to take a broad survey of motor 
development, in the race no less than in the child, we are 
able to signalize certain great principles which we cannot 
do without : principles which stand out in biology and in 
psychology as essential to any theory of development. 
The whole range of facts fairly available for the genetic 
theory of emotion reactions should be brought under our 
three principles : Habit, used broadly to include the effects 
of repetition and heredity, as the postulate of ' race experi- 
ence ' makes use of it ; Accommodation, the law of adapta- 
Q 



226 Motor Attitudes and Expressions, 

tion in all progressive evolution, no matter how adaptation 
is secured ; and, earliest and most fundamental, Dynamo- 
genesis, expressing the fact simply of regular connection 
between the sensory and motor sides of all living reactions, 
as to amount of process. These principles have already 
been given some notice. Let us see, therefore, how, if we 
assume that these three principles are all the ' rules of 
procedure' which the organism has to work under, — how, 
then, emotion and its expression can have come to be. 

I. As for the fact of Dynamogenesis : what bearing has 
this principle upon the theory of emotion ? Much every 
way. We must bear in mind that this principle has 
always been acting, and always is acting, in every reaction 
we make ; that our reactions have grown to be what they 
are in all cases by direct reflection of what we have 
received or experienced ; that just as certain as it is that 
we are experiencing new things every instant of our lives, 
just so certain is it that we are expressing these new 
experiences in every reaction that we make. Every one 
is familiar with Professor James's view that our minds 
never have just the same contents twice over. Of course 
they do not. But the correlative fact has not had the same 
recognition. If we never experience the same twice, so we 
never act the same twice. The new x of content, added to 
the old c of content, must call out a new x of action, added 
to the old a of action. If then our reaction is always a + x, 
just as the content which it follows upon is c + x, then no 
reaction is ever that and that only which is guaranteed by 
habit, inheritance, and what not, in the past. 

For it is easy to see that in every action of every organ- 
ism at every stage of development there are two elements 
of discharge ; an element due to habit solely, the dis- 



The Theory of "Emotional Expression? 227 

charges which are let loose by the old quantity of content 
into the pathways fixed by association, and then, second, 
an element of new discharge due to the new quantity of 
content. 

With this distinction in mind, we come to ask whether 
emotion is present in this state of things. Suppose we 
are taking a particular instance of fear when we know that 
it is present, and then ask what factor in this whole state 
of central process the emotion really corresponds to. We 
find several possible answers. 

The emotion may be said, in the terms of one possible 
answer, to be due to the presence of the new elements of 
content ; to the commotion made by new presentations, 
images, play of thoughts, etc., and the expression to be 
due to the passing off of this commotion to the muscles. 
The reply to this view seems easy when we remember that 
with the instinctive emotions, our case of the child's fear, 
it is a very old familiar thing, not a new thing at all, which 
excites the emotion ; yet granted this, we still may say 
that the discharge due to the new elements of content in 
other cases of emotion, not so clearly instinctive, must on 
our view of excess discharge, give some feeling of either 
pleasure or pain, and it is possible that the pleasure or 
pain tone of all but the instinctive emotions arises in 
this way. It is an element in consciousness brought about 
by new accommodation conditions. 

Yet this again may be disputed. One may admit the 
new element of discharge due to dynamogenesis, but then 
add a pertinent view. He may distinguish content + its 
expression, from content + feeling of its expression; say- 
ing that there is no consciousness or feeling of the new 
element of motor process until it is itself reported as a 



228 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

new element of sensory content. Quite possible ; it may- 
be so, if the nervous system has developed that way. But 
we are convinced that it has not developed that way. We 
have found it necessary to hold that the pleasure repre- 
sents the heightened organic process from which the excess 
discharge which issues in dynamogeny is itself released. 
Of course, as has been said above, the effect of the dis- 
charge in movement is reported back in a new element of 
pleasure or pain, but that is only claiming for it in turn 
an influence upon the vital processes whose condition is 
the sole direct ground of pleasure-pain consciousness. 

So we may safely say as the result of the action of dyna- 
mogenesis that there is in all emotion — as in every state 
of consciousness in which there are new elements of content 
— a tingeing of pleasure or pain due to the presence of 
these new elements of content ; and that there are in all 
actions, under the same conditions, new elements of dis- 
charge which give part of the movements involved in the 
so-called expression of that state of consciousness. 

II. With this result well in mind, let us inquire more 
fully into the influence of the second of our principles, 
Habit. 

It is now evident that a motor reaction of any kind has 
always two stimulating antecedents : one the influence 
fixed by habit, and the other the influence of the new ele- 
ments of content presented by the environment. But we 
know that habit tends to make reactions automatic and 
reflex ; and that consciousness tends to evaporate from 
such reactions. As I put it long ago, "psychologically, it 
[Habit] means loss of oversight, diffusion of attention, 
subsiding consciousness." l Hence we must admit that the 

1 Feeling and Will, p. 49. 



The Theory of ''Emotional Expression! 229 

reactions most dominated by habit — the smoothest, most 
inherited, most instinctive reactions — have least conscious- 
ness. And, on the other hand, where habit is least influ- 
ential, where the content is largely new, where the pleasure 
or pain of its assimilation is great, where attention and 
effort are strained, where excitement runs high — in all 
these cases the stimulating influence is new, one which 
has not yet been brought under the influence of habit, and 
so one which adds a new dynamogenic influence to the 
reaction. 

It turns out, however, that just those 'expressive' reac- 
tions which are most instinctive and reflex (fear, anger, 
joy, etc.) really do carry with them most of the conscious- 
ness which we call emotion — certainly vivid and disturbed 
enough. What then shall we say ? Either that there are 
really present other new elements of content additional to 
the regular antecedents of the reflex ; or that the emotion 
is not the antecedent of the expression at all, but that the 
reverse is true — the emotion is consequent upon the 
expression. We cannot hold to the former alternative. 
Where are the adequate stimulants in conscious content, 
new or old, to the newly hatched chick's wild fear of the 
hawk ? So we must take the other alternative, and hand 
over all this class of reactions to the theory which holds that 
the emotion, as far as it has fixed instinctive forms of ex- 
pression, follows upon the expression. I have no hesita- 
tion, therefore, in adopting the ' effect ' theory of emotion 
recently announced by Lange and James as regards in- 
herited emotional expression excited by constant definite 
objects of presentation. 

Emotion is, on this view, therefore, no exception to our 
law of ontogenetic growth : the law that that which is 



230 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

habitual is accompanied by least consciousness. The high 
consciousness in emotion is a reflex effect. But we would 
expect, on the other hand, that in all the ideal states of 
mind, in all the new complications of content to which the 
attention has to get adjusted, in all emotional states which 
do not attach immediately and unreflectively to conscious 
objects of presentation, — that in all these cases the excit- 
ing influence should have the dynamogenic effect already 
noted, and so give elements of expression over and above 
the reactions due to habit. 

Reverting, now, to our fancied situation, a state of 
emotion in actual operation, we find that we have made 
certain simplifications. The pleasure or pain of it is, at 
least in part, due to the presence of new elements in the 
object which causes the emotion; the expression of it is 
due, at least in part, to the new discharges let loose by 
the central process corresponding to this pleasure or pain ; 
the expression is further due, certainly in part, to old 
reactions or habits of movement which have become com- 
mon in the presence of this object or others of its class ; 
and the quality of the emotion, the character it has as 
making it different from other emotions, is due, certainly 
in part, to the feeling of these factors of the expression 
actually taking place. So far, then, we have accounted 
for something of the pleasure or pain of an emotion, some- 
thing of its expression, and something of its peculiar quality 
or character. Can we do more ? Let us see what we can 
get out of our third principle, i Accommodation.' 

III. The law of Accommodation has appeared to us 
to be operative in two ways : first, as expressing the mode 
of each new adaptation under the action of dynamogene- 
sis, — the organism adapts itself by the selection, from 



The Theory of 'Emotional Expression' 231 

excess discharges, of movements fittest to aid vitality, — 
this is one aspect of accommodation ; and it also secures 
by the action of association, the repetition and permanent 
fixing of these fittest movements in great habits which 
are the regular utility reactions, reflexes, instincts, fixed 
expressions, etc., of the organism, — this is the other 
aspect of accommodation. Now, the bearing of the second 
of these aspects of accommodation on the theory of emo- 
tion gives us great expectations at once, for it enables 
us to bring into its complex conditions all of the organic 
and mental elements which are regularly associated with 
those factors already pointed out. Let us look a little at 
details. 

We found that a new object served to bring new 
vitality conditions, new pleasure or pain, new movements 
by dynamogenesis. But these new elements only get 
fixed for recurrence as they fit into old adjustments, caus- 
ing differentiations of them. But this means that the new 
gets associated with the old ; so that when it comes again, 
all the old which its presence touched on the former 
occasion now clusters to the front in company with it. 
I tremble and fly at the sight of a lion, because he 
reminds me of a lion's power and disposition ; and my 
attitudes in the presence of such formidable creatures are 
those of trembling and flight. So, in brief, we have a 
great mass of associated elements, both of content and 
of movement, rushing into consciousness in consequence 
of every new adjustment, and in addition to its present 
intrinsic motor and emotional value. This gives more 
quality and more pleasure or pain to the state of emotion. 

This principle applies directly, also, to all the organic, 
visceral, conaesthetic, sensations so vividly present and 



232 Motor Attitudes and Expressions, 

soul-filling in many emotions. All habitual reactions in 
states of emotion, as they become more reflex, and hence 
less conscious in their actual carrying out, yet come to 
give, nevertheless, by their return wave upon conscious- 
ness, overpowering floods of organic sensation. I think it 
is due to the fact that it is by muscular movements of ex- 
cess with accommodation, by violent, often long-continued, 
protective or offensive reactions, that violent pleasure and 
pain conditions of vitality were originally reflected in 
action, in the history of animal life. This exhaustive 
muscular process taxed for its maintenance all the organic 
processes, — heart, lungs, etc., — so that a great mass of 
organic sensations were thrown into consciousness, and 
by unbroken association came to stand themselves, in union 
with muscular sensations, for the damaging or beneficial 
kinds of stimulation that at first excited pleasure or pain, 
even when the object actually present has no intrinsic 
emotional value. And as far as they were themselves 
vitalizing and devitalizing, they are directly hedonic, and 
so go on to increase their own good or bad effect. It is 
thus probable that in our more violent organic reactions 
in emotion, the organism is recapitulating in amount the 
wear and tear of the long processes of offence or defence 
that animal forms were accustomed to go through when 
they met the objects which now tend to excite these 
emotions and sensations in us. 

This element explains most of what is usually called 
' emotional expression,' and we now see that it explains 
most of the quality and much of the pleasure and pain of 
all those emotions which have instinctive expression. So 
far, then, the body of emotion is largely filled up with 
consciousness of habitual actions actually shooting off, 



The Theory of "Emotional Expression! 233 

these habits being, in their origin and gradual formation 
in race experience, selections, all the way through, from 
excess reactions springing from different vital conditions. 
Certain laws of their development have been formulated 
by Darwin and others ; laws which answer the great ques- 
tion why a particular emotion is present when particular 
bodily attitudes, vaso-motor changes, visceral sensations, 
are also present. This I speak of further below. 

And the other aspect of the principle of accommodation 
lets in more light on emotion. In this aspect of accom- 
modation — named first in order above — we find the 
sphere of new adjustments secured by the constant modi- 
fication and differentiation of old ones. There is a great 
field of such accommodation in the fact and function of 
attention, a thing of such clear mental value and such 
wide bearings that special sections are devoted below 1 
to its rise and development. Here and now I can only 
assume what is there argued for, and note the relation of 
the attention, considered as mental function of accommo- 
dation, to emotion. 

Consciousness, we have seen, is the new thing in nature 

— the thing by which organisms show in all cases their 
latest and finest adjustments. And the central fact of 
consciousness, its prime instrument, its selective agent, 
its seizing, grasping, relating, assimilating, apperceiving 

— in short, its accommodating element and process — is 
attention. This all current psychology admits. And all 
psychology which is aware of its genetic problems will 
also admit a further point ; this — that in the life of the 
higher organisms, such as pre-eminently human life, the 
mind has superseded all other agencies and processes 

1 Below, Chap. X., § 3, and Chap. XV. 



234 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

in aiding and securing adjustments to environment. If 
these two things be admitted, — the points, to repeat, that 
mind is nature's great accommodating agent, and that at- 
tention is mind's great accommodating agent, — then it 
follows that the law of accommodation must get its appli- 
cation almost exclusively, in higher organisms, in connec- 
tion with acts of attention. 

Now in the later chapter referred to, it is shown beyond 
a peradventure, in my opinion, that attention is simply 
the form which the ' excess ' process, found in our earlier 
discussions to be the means of all organic accommodation, 
has taken on in habitual connection with memory, imagina- 
tion, and thought. The attention process is a motor reac- 
tion, involving all the elements of such reactions to a 
mental content, as these reactions have become, by habit, 
crystallized in certain relatively fixed forms of reverbera- 
tion, muscular contraction, etc. Just what elements are 
involved in it — that comes up later. Here we assume 
this doctrine of attention, and go on to ask its relation to 
our present topic, emotion. 

We see at the outset that if attention is the habitual 
form of mental accommodation, that what we have said 
about the factors found in lower emotion — the factors 
all of which are genetic elements present together, height- 
ened dynamogenesis, reflex feelings of discharge, asso- 
ciated organic disturbances flooding consciousness — must 
be true also of attention. That is, every act of attention 
must give all these factors in kind, but on a higher level 
— a level at which the stimulus which claims attention is 
now a mental image, memory, an idea. 

We should have heightened dynamogenesis, looking at 
the matter in some detail, first felt as pleasure and pain 



The Theory of ^ Emotional Expression! 235 

in the activity of attention itself in receiving, holding, 
using new ideas. This is just what psychology does find 
and calls ' ideal' pleasure and pain; and it is the basis of 
the doctrine of Ward and the Herbartians that the play 
of ideas is the locus of all hedonic consciousness. Ideal 
pleasure, simply as such, abstracted — as of course in fact 
it cannot be — from all qualities in the content is, on the 
physical side, heightened nervous process in the organic 
seat of the higher content attended to. It is just the same, 
for ideas, that lower pleasure is for sensation contents. 

Second, we ought to have certain qualitative elements 
brought into consciousness from the habitual contractions, 
etc., of attention itself; the attention is, in large part, 
certain constant reflex contractions — of brow, and glottis, 
movements of skin of skull, etc., together with the organic 
sensations of the vital processes associated with these. 
This is again so evidently the case, that we find certain 
qualities of feeling, called 'emotions of function/ con- 
nected with movements of the attention : the sense of 
contraction or expansion, of fatigue, of effort, of freshness, 
of curiosity, of interest, etc. 

Then, third, a true analysis of attention shows that 
there are certain refinements of attention, whereby the ele- 
ments which go to make it up vary very markedly accord- 
ing to the character of the idea or object attended to. 
There is visual attention to visual ideas, and auditory 
attention to auditory ideas, motor attention to ideas of 
movement, etc., each made up of its own refined system 
of contractions and organic effects, inside of the wider 
circle of contractions and effects which make them all 
acts of attention in the generic sense. Now, in as far 
as these smaller refinements of effect get themselves 



236 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

grouped into relatively independent habits, just so far 
they contribute new quality to the whole psychosis which 
the given object or idea, claiming the attention at the 
moment, wraps about itself. And these qualities consti- 
tute the higher emotional states which we call sentiments, 
higher feelings, the aesthetic, the ethical, the religious, 
etc. 1 

The theory of development, in short, requires that we 
distinguish the hedonic from the qualitative element in 
higher emotion. Intellect could not have developed in the 
first place, nor have become the magnificent engine of 
organic accommodation, through volition, which it is, if in- 
tellectual, aesthetic, and ethical pleasures were only the reso- 
nance of instinct reflexes. Yet even here the qualitative 
marks, the kind of excitement, the main psychosis apart 
from the pleasures and pains of new apprehensions, knowl- 
edges, curiosities, are just as surely, and for the same 
genetic reasons, the resonance of instinct reflexes as are 
the gross fixed expressions of anger, fear, etc., in animals. 

So, taking stock of our net outcome, we find that our 
principles of development have, assuming the develop- 
ment itself, told us to expect a group of elements in 
consciousness at certain stages of evolution. And when 
we come to examine and analyze consciousness at these 
stages, we find that these elements so grouped are just 
what we ordinarily lump together and call emotion. And 
the predominance of one or other element in a marked 
degree in a particular case is entirely the ground of differ- 
ence between this case and others, and is entirely a phe- 
nomenon of relative development. The infant, and the 

1 The reader may consult the classification and treatment of the emotions 
given in my Handbook of Psychology, Vol. II., Chaps. VIII. ff. 



Hedonic Expression and its Law, 237 

animal which has not that highest engine of accommoda- 
tion, — attention, — have the reflex, habit-born, organic 
thing called, it is true, emotion; but its quality is 'rank/ 
unreasonable, urgent, a matter of nerves and instinct. 
And that is all the infant has, except the pleasures and 
pains which are also sensations, or quales of sensation. 

But the man — the child plus mind — has the higher 
agent of accommodation, attention, and that supreme form 
of attention called volition ; his emotion has added ele- 
ments, not different in kind, but only in level, and in 
relative freedom from the grosser implications of organic 
habit. He has refined emotions about his thoughts, his 
ideas, his ideals, his duties, his gods. 

My conclusion then is that emotion is, in all cases, this : 
pleasure and pain of accommodation, plus pleasure and 
pain of habit, plus a certain lot of qualities contributed to 
consciousness by more or less habitual processes of muscle, 
organ, and gland, going on at the time. 

And the expression of emotion is, in all cases, this : 
certain more or less habitual processes going on in the 
organism, plus elements of muscular and bodily contraction 
due to present pleasure and pain. That is all. 1 

§ 3. Hedonic Expression and its Law, 

In the preceding section of this chapter we found two 
questions implicated in this matter of expression : one of 
them we have now attempted to answer, that which con- 

1 A partial development of this general view, with special reference to cur- 
rent theories of emotion, is to be found in my article, ' The Origin of Emotional 
Expression,' in The Psychological Review, I., November, 1894, P- 610. I am 
glad to say that my conclusions are very near to those reached, by analysis, 
by William James in his latest formulation (see the same Review, I., Septem- 



238 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

cerns itself with the psycho-physics of emotion as a 
phenomenon of consciousness taken generally. We now 
come to the second question. It brings up for our con- 
sideration the fact of particular expressions as attaching 
to particular emotional states, and asks how it is that each 
such particular instance of organic and muscular expres- 
sion could have arisen and come to be what it is. 

I. It has become evident that the general principles of 
development apply to all expressions, and that in explain- 
ing any particular case we have only to ask what aspect of 
development is predominantly concerned. At the same 
time it must be equally true that all such aspects, how- 
ever we may find it necessary to consider them as sep- 
arate principles to explain different classes of phenomena, 
must nevertheless have their common basis in the one 
original fact of contractility, with the modifications and 
adjustments which it undergoes in phylogenetic evolution. 

Now it has become plain that all motor-discharge, as far 
as it is differentiated at all, gets to be so as an index of 
waxing and waning life processes of nutrition, etc. And 
we have seen that the waxing and the waning must have 
been equally original wherever life was present at all. 
This waxing and waning life process must reflect itself 
in the movements of the organism, giving two great types 
of movement in all life, however low in the biological 
scale. And we have found it possible in the examination 
of higher forms of life in which consciousness with pleas- 
ure and pain are clearly present, to classify the organic 

ber, 1894, p. 516); conclusions which, I think, are not just the same as those 
of the chapter on ' Emotion,' in his Principles of Psychology. The psychologi- 
cal doctrine of the rise and progress of emotion in the child — its ontogenesis 
— I am treating in detail, in addition to what is said in Chap. XI. § 3, below, 
in my early volume of ' Interpretations.' 



Habitual Motor Attitudes. 239 

manifestations correlative to pleasure and pain under a 
similar twofold effect on organic and muscular movement. 
So it has been simply the logic of fact which has led us 
to say that this twofold type of movement, showing rela- 
tive vitality in lower organisms and relative pleasure in 
the higher, is one and the same phenomenon ; and that 
even in the lowest forms of life, waxing and waning vital 
processes are to be considered as the physiological ana- 
logue of the pleasure-pain consciousness. 

In this fundamental division of movements, therefore, 
expansions, heightened motor energy, and excess discharge, 
on the one hand, and contractions, lowered energy, inhib- 
ited discharge, on the other hand, we have what I venture 
to call 'hedonic expression,' with the law of its twofold 
manifestation. Inside of this all further differentiations 
of movement must arise as special adaptations. It remains 
to examine them further with a view to the understanding 
of their rise ; and in connection with them further light 
may be expected upon this general condition of them. 

§ 4. Habitual Motor Attitudes. 

The teleology of all special adaptations of movement — 
the reason for their existence, the end which they would 
have in view provided they could think and speak — now 
becomes plainer than it was before. This end is not in 
any sense expression. The organism has no special ten- 
dency to show itself off, no means of acquiring systems of 
'signs' to show what is in consciousness beforehand. 
The only such signs are these very differences of move- 
ment in type, which correspond to waxing and waning 
vitality — to pleasure and pain. These are expressive 



240 Motor Attitudes and Expressions, 

because, and only because, they are different, and so 
reflect differences in the processes which issue in them. 
The subsequent modifications of movement of any and 
of every kind, have quite a different origin. They have 
in view the adaptation of the organism in further detail 
to the conditions under which the life process exists. 
Their end, each of them, is to keep up the stimulations 
which secure the waxing, and to avoid those which bring 
about the waning of life. How can they be expressions 
of what is not yet secured or avoided ? Of course, all 
movements which do secure one of these ends, and so 
become fixed as habits in the organism, may and do then 
become signs of the effects on the organism which it is 
their office to secure, and we may then reverse the order' 
of rise of the two factors and consider, for convenience, 
the life process ^cause^and the movements which are really 
means to it, effect. This is what the phrase 'emotional 
expression ' does. But the ' expressions ' of emotion, as 
we have already seen, are — apart from the dynamogenic 
issue of pleasure and pain — not caused by the emotion 
at all. The emotion is the outcome of them. 

As far, therefore, as there is any true expression, as far 
as there are any movements which are really in their origin 
the characteristic outcome of what is beforehand in the 
mind, it is all summed up in the one antithesis with which 
life begins : that between organic and vital expansion as 
expressing pleasure, and organic and vital depression as 
expressing pain. 

This may be put in the general statement already made, 
that all expression, properly so-called, is hedonic expression^ 
which is the reflection, in the organic and muscular func- 
tions, of the relative influence of experience of any kind 



Habitual Motor Attitudes, 241 

upon the vitality of the organism. It comes vividly before 
us in detail in the later chapter on * Organic Imitation/ a 
phrase which simply serves to indicate the general method 
by which, through this one form of expression, the organ- 
ism works its new adaptations. 

The particular organic and muscular states which are 
associated with the emotions, such as fear, anger, etc., and 
called popularly their expression, must have arisen not, as 
we now see, as expressions of anything, but as co-ordina- 
tions and associations of reactions which proved useful to 
the organism in maintaining and improving its vitality. 
All of them, then, were originally utility reactions, and arose 
each in its place, and the system of them as a whole, as 
special adaptations. They fall under the theory of adapta- 
tion and exhibit particular instances of it. 

So the question of the rise of these groups of movement 
takes a new form, and its answer comes to require that 
each such so-called expression shall be shown in its origin 
to have been useful to the organism in certain conditions 
of its environment. 

This detailed inquiry evidently belongs to the general 
theory of organic evolution. Darwin has himself examined 
the various instinctive ' expressions ' in detail, 1 and proved, 
beyond a question, that most of them were originally use- 
ful ways of reacting in the storm and stress of maintaining, 
defending, and extending life. Further aid in this tracing 
of the evolution of expression has been afforded by those 
investigators who have analyzed the anatomical and physi- 
ological conditions of each such group of effects. 2 

The results of their work have not been entirely success- 

1 Expression of the Emotions. 

2 Bell, The Anatomy of Expression ; Mantagazza, in several monographs. 

R 



242 Motor Attitudes and Expressions, 

ful, however, as concerns details; since there has always 
remained over a residue of well-marked effects, accompany- 
ing equally well-marked emotional states, which could not 
be shown to have been useful to man or animal. Darwin 
himself formulated the principle which states the one real 
organic requirement, namely, the utility of a group of move- 
ments in the life-history of the organism. But he did not 
stop here. He found it necessary to place beside this prin- 
ciple certain others, which served to explain the cases to 
which the utility formula could not be made to apply. 

Darwin's principle of ' serviceable associated habits,' how- 
ever, is all that the case really demands when we come to 
get an adequate view of the process of development. It is 
now my aim to show that the theory of development stated 
in earlier pages of this book enables us to restate the results 
•of Darwin's work, so as to include all cases under the one 
great principle of ' serviceable associated habit,' taken to- 
gether with that of ' hedonic expression ' already explained. 

II. The series of facts which gave Darwin greatest 
trouble are those which he gathered together under his 
' law of antithesis ' : cases of animal attitudes in certain 
emotional situations, which seemed to be capable of serving 
no useful purpose of any kind to the animal, but which 
were very clearly just the reverse of other attitudes, which 
went with the opposite emotions and were evidently useful 
in connection with those emotions. For example, — to cite 
one of the cases so powerfully illustrated in the photographic 
copies reproduced in Darwin's book, — a dog in anger strikes 
certain attitudes of defence, such as general rigidity of 
muscle, high back, bristling of hair, retracted lip, forward 
ears, etc., — all of direct use in a fight with his enemy. 
But the dog's attitudes when he feels friendly and wel- 



Habitual Motor Attitudes. 243 

comes his master are just the reverse — general limber- 
ing of muscles, flexible turnings of body, lowering of back, 
fawning, backing of ears, close-lying hair, etc. The emo- 
tion is antithetic, so the expression is also ; that is the 
only reason, practically, which Darwin could give for the 
animal's attitude in the second case. 

There are a great many such instances in the series 
of emotional attitudes in animals and man. But we have 
only to state the principle of antithesis clearly, to see that 
it is no principle at all, unless we hold that the emotion 
causes the expression. And even then, we are no better 
off, I think. For we still have to ask why the emotions 
themselves are different. This, we have seen, we can 
only answer by saying that they are different because the 
movements have been different by which the organism 
got itself adjusted to the particular objects, etc., giv- 
ing these several emotions. We come, that is, back to 
movements again, and have to explain why, in these cases, 
the movements are antithetical. 

Darwin himself is as modest here as elsewhere, and 
only says that it is natural that opposite mental states 
should be associated with opposite physical states. But 
there is no reason, so far, that they should in fact. Darwin 
here makes, quite unconsciously, an incursion into the field 
of popular fallacy and of Hegelian logic. It is a perfect 
nightmare, — which should be left to the Hegelians to 
revel in, — this reading into nature of opposites to all her 
facts, simply because the mind's forms of thinking go by 
contraries. Why, if showing the fangs aids an animal 
when he fights, should covering them aid him when he 
loves ? His teeth are involved in one case, but not in the 
other. If rigid length aids him in standing up against his 



244 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

enemy in a fight, why should contortions be indulged in 
when he sees a friend ? 

The only general fact which in advance seems to make 
these antithesis likely, is the arrangement of the muscles, 
whereby they go in pairs, called 'antagonists.' Each mus- 
cle of such a pair is held in control by the other; and 
whichever contracts, the other is involved in some kind 
of an opposite contraction ; so it is easy to say that when 
consciousness is in a state which represents the stimulation 
of one muscle, it is only to be expected that the passage of 
consciousness into an opposite state will not only release 
the one muscle, but, by a kind of organic rebound, stimu- 
late the antagonist. This is physiological and true ; but it 
still in no way explains the origin of different contrary at- 
titudes ; for it is a main task of our theory of development 
to explain just this arrangement of the muscles. How 
does it come that there are antagonistic muscles ? What 
uses called them into being ? For the muscular system has 
developed by use and fitness. Once answer this by show- 
ing the practical use of both muscles of each pair of 
antagonists, and we can then explain both the fact that 
attitudes are antithetic, and the further fact that opposite 
emotions are there with them. For we have seen that it 
is the muscular and organic attitudes and associations 
which give quality to the emotions. 

It becomes necessary, therefore, to completely reverse 
the popular conception of antithetical expression and 
Darwin's conception also, as far as he leaves the facts 
which he so adequately describes, and shares in the theory 
that an emotion causes its so-called expression. We must 
find in our theory of development by means of detailed 
motor adaptations, ground for the origin of a muscular 



Habitual Motor Attitudes. 245 

system which works by antithesis of push and pull, for- 
ward and backward, contraction and relaxation, antagon- 
ism, in short ; and with it the detailed differences among 
these attitudes themselves, which correspond to differences 
in emotions, as we actually find them in our experience. 

The latter task is largely a matter of detailed examina- 
tion and classification of the various muscular groups found 
in the different emotions. This has been done with some 
success for many emotions. I shall not attempt to take 
that further here. The genetic problem, however, the rise 
of antagonism, is a further question to set before us. 

It has doubtless occurred to readers of the two pre- 
ceding chapters, what account is possible of the rise of 
muscular and emotional antagonism. The facts of organic 
gain and loss, contraction and expansion, pleasure and 
pain, have already cost us so many words that it tends to 
come to mind at once as an explanation of the fact of an- 
tithetic expression. What I have said of hedonic expres- 
sion, recognizing it as the only true expression, leads us 
to expect a great division among states of consciousness 
with respect to their hedonic colouring as pleasurable or 
painful. If organic life has from the start manifested 
itself in two forms of movement, and if all new adjust- 
ments have been effected inside of this fundamental 
bifurcation, then of course the muscular system, in its 
development, must take on the form of a series of organs 
fitted to carry this original antithesis into all the details 
of life. This is exactly the account which must be given 
of the rise of the muscular system, with its pairs of antag- 
onists. The muscles represent special habits and combi- 
nations of movements fitted either to close up upon and 



246 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

hold stimulations, or to draw away from and escape them ; 
and these are antithetic ways of behaviour. 

It is evident, however, that this explanation of antithetic 
functions was not possible on the old theory of the nature 
of emotion, the theory that the emotions are so many dis- 
tinct mental acts or functions which ' express ' themselves 
outwards in the muscles. For expressions of such a kind 
might just as well as not come into opposition with hedonic 
expression, or they might clash with the reactions most 
useful for the organism in relation to its environment, 
or, again, they might, by their cross currents, prevent the 
development of a muscular system on any consistent plan. 
The old view gave rise to all kinds of dualism ; the dual- 
ism between pleasure-pain and emotion being most of all 
invited. 1 

It is the force of such a criticism, implicitly felt rather 
than clearly recognized, that has led so many psycholo- 
gists to claim that emotion is only a compounded state of 
pleasures or pains, a position which well deserves the 
description given it by James : 2 " This is a hackneyed 
psychological doctrine, but on any theory of the seat of 
emotion it seems to me one of the most artificial and 
scholastic of the untruths that disfigure our science. One 
might as well say that the essence of prismatic colour is 
pleasure and pain." 

This view of antithetical reactions is also impossible on 
the current biological theories of development ; that is, 
either on the theory that accounts for all development by 

1 See my criticism of such a dualism in the work of Marshall (Pleasure, 
Pain, and ^Esthetics), in The Psychological Review, L, November, 1894, p. 
619 f. 

2 The Psychological Review, I., September, 1894, p. 525. 



Habitual Motor Attitudes, 247 

compounded repetitions of reactions, alone, or on the more 
psychological theory going by the names of Spencer and 
Bain. For my view requires us to recognize an original 
tendency of organic forms to react in two antithetical ways 
with reference to stimulations which give the two original 
vital effects corresponding to pleasure and pain ; and that 
none of the earlier theories do give this recognition, I have 
shown in an earlier place. Darwin held — as far as he took 
up the theory of ontogenetic adaptation, as I think he 
nowhere did explicitly — the ordinary biological doctrine 
of adaptation by chance repetition and compounding of 
movements which proved themselves useful ; so of course 
he was unable to see any real reason for the existence of 
systems of movements to which no special utility in race 
history could be assigned. 1 

1 It may be said, as it has been said to the writer, in conversation, by one 
who is well informed in biology, that this view of mine requiring the distinct 
recognition of movements towards advantageous sources of stimulation and 
away from what is disadvantageous, is made by biologists, and so there is no 
novelty in the position. With this I do not agree ; and it is well to point out 
the fact that Darwin in this crucial case of antithetical movements did not use 
any such principle. And yet the need of some such real antithesis so strongly 
impressed the mind of Darwin, as is seen in his detailed casting about in his 
Chapter II. for some proof of antithesis, that his attitude seems to me to throw 
his authority somewhat on my side in opposition to the current theories which 
consider the organism practically passive in its uniform responses to stimu- 
lation. Passages, indeed, might be quoted abundantly from Darwin, which 
show what his doctrine of organic adaptation probably would have been if 
he had developed it. Of course biologists admit the fact that living creatures 
of certain kinds behave as if they found some sensations pleasant and others 
repulsive ; it is the facts as reported by biologists that I am resting my case 
upon. But they have never, I think, made this kind of antithetical reaction 
fundamental to the life process, nor have they ever utilized it to explain 
general motor adaptations. It has been treated instead as a sort of outside 
fact and, as it were, a mystery, a fact which the chemical theorists did not 
like to recognize at all, and one which the vitalists cited in support of 'vital 
force,' ' directive tendency,' and that kind of thing. Recently psycholo- 



248 Motor Attitudes and Expressions, 

Our conclusion, then, in regard to antithetical attitudes, 
is that antithesis is a fundamental fact of hedonic ex- 
pression ; and as hedonic expression is the only real ex- 
pression, the principle of antithesis becomes, everywhere 
in motor development, the one law of expression. The 
other principle, already mentioned, of Darwin's, that of 
' serviceable associated habits,' is, on the other hand, the 
one principle also in its sphere ; but its sphere is not 
expression, — its sphere is motor adaptation. All adapta- 
tions whatever — except the first great division of move- 
ments in accordance with the law of antithesis — are 
instances of * serviceable associated habit.' 

Consequently we may say that in any organic attitude 
whatever the case is the same as we found it to be, in the 
earlier section, in emotional attitudes. There is the real 
expression factor, the new hedonic element, issuing in new 
antithetical phases, by the law of dynamogenesis ; and there 

gists have taken it up as lending evidence to certain theories of the ' psychic 
properties of matter,' etc. 

In short, this most remarkable of all adaptations in biology has had just 
about the same treatment in that science that the fact of conscious imitation 
has had by psychologists. Conscious imitation has been remarked upon ever 
since Aristotle, vaguely described, and then dropped, simply because psycho- 
logical theory gave no opening for such a mysterious thing. I cite below the 
contradictory utterances of certain psychologists on imitation. 

And when we come to compare the two facts, it is sufficiently remarkable' 
that we are able to reconstruct the theory of adaptation in such a way as to 
show that this kind of organic selection by movement, and this kind of imitative 
selection by consciousness, are the same thing. * Organic imitation ' and ' con- 
scious imitation ' — each a circular process tending to maintain certain stimula- 
tions and to avoid others — here is one thing. Organic and mental adaptation is 
one process and one only, and it works by this two-fold contrast from the start. 
If so, then we have reclaimed two great outcast facts, and shown them to be 
fundamental facts. But this intuition, if it be a true one, and if my thought 
about it be clear, requires practically a revolution of theory on both sides, the 
organic and the mental. 



Habitual Motor Attitudes, 249 

is, besides, the quality as such, the differencing 'feel ' of 
the attitude accomplished, with its habitual pleasure or 
pain, and all the organic associations, which are in all cases 
due to the reflex, consolidated, instinctive habits of useful 
action. 

Mr. Darwin also finds it necessary to recognize another 
class of facts which he is unable to bring under either of 
the foregoing principles, facts which he puts together under 
the so-called principle of 'direct nervous discharge.' He 
finds over and above the movements which show reactions 
useful to the creature or to his ancestors, and also over 
and above the movements antithetical to the foregoing, 
certain movements of the animal which appear as such to 
follow no law. 1 This very fact of lawlessness, overflow, 
accidental issuing of the stimulating process right out into 
the muscular and organic systems, is expressed by the 
phrase 'direct nervous discharge'; all it means, therefore, 
as a principle, is that we are dealing with phenomena of 
stimulation and reaction. Such cases are one's convulsive 
movements when in a dentist's chair, the jumping and 
clapping of hands of a child's glee, the lawless gambolling 
of playful lambs, and the skittishness of a horse on a cold 
day, — movements which are not just alike in any two crea- 
tures, nor just alike in any two experiences of the same 
creature, — and with it all, various general effects, such as 
trembling, shivering, fainting in fright, flushing in joy, blush- 
ing in shame, glandular secretions, variations in heart action, 
etc., some of them positively harmful to the organism. 

This class of phenomena — facts which Darwin found 
no use for in the economy of organic development — are, 
from the point of view of my theory, most instructive and 

1 See his detailed instances, loc. cit.> pp. 66 ff. 



250 Motor Attitudes and Expressions, 

valuable as evidence. They give, to my mind, very direct 
proof of my main thesis respecting the method of organic 
adaptation. This we may see on closer examination, 
although the points are in the main so evident that the 
exposition may seem tiresome. 

We have found that increased vital energies tend to 
produce heightened or excessive motor processes, — Spen- 
cer's ' heightened discharge,' Bain's 'pleasure,' my 'motor 
excess.' We have found that this and its opposite, 
lowered vitality, express themselves in antithetical move- 
ments, expansions and contractions, advancing and retreat- 
ing, etc. Again, we have found that it is from these 
antithetical movements that all further adjustments or 
adaptations are effected by 'organic selection,' those 
movements of either kind which are useful being retained 
as permanent utility reactions. And this scheme of course 
assumes the constant presence, at every stage of animal 
development, of the excess discharge — the 'hedonic 
expression' of my earlier section. 

Further, the characteristics of movements which repre- 
sent unutilized vital and nervous overflow are plain enough. 
They should be very diffuse, indefinite, purposeless, highly 
toned by pleasure or pain ; diffuse, because they arise 
from central processes of such intensity as to overflow 
the ordinary motor channels already fixed by heredity 
and habit ; indefinite, because as soon as they do get 
for themselves fixed ways of discharge, representing 
in any sense an accommodation of the organism to the 
stimulations which call them out, then at once they fall 
into another category, that of 'serviceable associated 
habit ' ; purposeless, because they represent excess energy 
over and above the regular expenditures called for by 



Habitual Motor Attitudes. 251 

habitual purposive reactions ; and highly toned, because 
their rise is itself a phenomenon of those vital conditions 
which lie at the basis of the hedonic consciousness. 

Now these are just the characters which Darwin and 
other writers attach to the movements which illustrate 
his principle of 'direct nervous discharge.' 

It is only, therefore, a step to the conclusion that in 
these movements we have, running through all life phe- 
nomena, high and low, the evidence of the excess pro- 
cesses, and their reverse, required by the theory of 
development. These are just the material from which 
new adjustments are made. Certain of these 'direct dis- 
charges ' happen to do something for the organism which 
it never succeeded in doing before, this secures pleasure, 
and by the law of further increased discharge through the 
same or associated channels again, these movements pass 
over to the reign of the law of 'serviceable associated 
habits ' ; but with it all, the issue in movement of the 
increased vital and pleasure processes due to success, has 
again recruited or depleted the excess discharge. So the 
' circular process ' goes on. 

We should find, however, that movements of this class 
are not quite lawless, nor purposeless. If I am right in 
finding that they are reactions in states of waxing and 
waning vitality — that they constitute just the hedonic 
expression, the only expression, properly speaking, which 
an organism has, — then they should of course express 
something. They should partake directly in the charac- 
ters found to mark off all antithetic movements. Move- 
ments which accompany highly pleasure-toned psychoses 
should be expansive, forward, outward, exciting ; but be- 
sides, they should carry with them all the characteristic 



252 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

utility reactions which are already associated with pleas- 
urable experiences. Movements, on the other hand, which 
accompany highly pain-toned psychoses, should be con- 
tractile, inward, repressing, and should carry along with 
them, besides, all the attitudes regularly associated with 
painful experiences. 

Now I submit that the close observation of all these 
confused — convulsive, if you will — sets of movement, do 
show this antithesis to a very marked degree. When 
they accompany pleasures they are found to involve not 
only those quite purposeless movements which simply 
mean diffused overflow of energy, but they show, more- 
over, two very clear kinds of utility reaction also. First, 
in excessive joy, we find not only the tremblings, weepings, 
heart-beatings, and muscle-twitchings, but also the usual 
habitual signs of joy which all pleasurable experiences 
show — the laugh, the facial expression, the voice tones, 
the bodily attitudes; and, further, certain tensions and 
movements of very evident utility, in grasping, retaining, 
coming-up-to-for-further-possession, etc., found in attitudes 
of welcome generally. And on the other hand, in connec- 
tion with the random movements shown in violent pain, the 
creatures also show two classes of habitual attitudes : first, 
those of organic and vital depression, felt as faintness, par- 
alysis, sweating, etc. ; and second, attitudes and acts of 
rebellion, defence, escape-by-removal from stimulation, such 
as frowning, setting teeth. And the two systems of atti- 
tude characteristic of pleasure are, in general, antithetic to 
those characteristic of pain. 

In fact, so clear is it that these ' direct ' movements are 
limiting processes to the ordinary antithetic attitudes, 
that we are able to look upon them as end-terms each in a 



Habitual Motor Attitudes. 253 

series which recapitulates organic growth in the acquisition 
of habits. Pleasure begins by bringing out the reactions 
which are oldest in race utility, then as it is continued 
or increased, those of newer formation and less univer- 
sality, then those peculiar to the individual, and finally, 
at the limit of duration or excess of intensity, the pur- 
poseless convulsive and random movements of Darwin. 
And pain proceeds by a similar series of manifestations 
— tracing reversely the series of adjustments acquired in 
race and individual history, the whole series being anti- 
thetic, in its great features, to the corresponding series of 
pleasure attitudes. 

There is also another principle clearly, although inade- 
quately, recognized by Darwin, which may now be brought 
out ; the principle made more of in James' discussion 
under the phrase 'principle of analogous feeling stimuli.' 
Darwin added a clause to his statement of the law of 
'serviceable associated habit,' which brings under it a 
great class of seemingly useless muscular movements. 
He says : " We have now, I think, sufficiently shown the 
truth of our first principle, namely, that when any sensa- 
tion, desire, dislike, etc., has led during a long series of 
generations to some voluntary movement, then a tendency 
to the performance of a similar movement will almost cer- 
tainly be excited, whenever the same or any analogous or 
associated sensation, etc., although very weak, is expe- 
rienced, notwithstanding that the movement in this case 
may not be of the least use." (Italics mine.) And he 
continues a little further on : " When we treat of the 
special expressions of man, the latter part of our first 
principle will be seen to hold good, namely, that when 
movements, associated through habit with certain states 



254 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

of mind, are partially repressed by the will, the strictly 
involuntary muscles, as well as those which are least 
under separate control of the will, are liable still to act ; 
and their action is often highly expressive. Conversely, 
when the will is temporarily or permanently weakened, 
the voluntary muscles fail before the involuntary." 1 The 
latter quotation may be taken to be the citation from the 
voluntary life of an instance of the principle that similar 
or ' analogous feeling ' stimuli tend to bring, in whole or 
part, by complication, semi-inhibition, or lack of inhibition, 
the reactions in movement which are habitual and useful 
in connection with the stimuli which they resemble. 

This series of facts, which are, in the sequel, of the 
first importance for mental development, are of especial 
interest here, as showing the relation of the theory of 
development now explained to the older purely biologi- 
cal theory. The latter, it will be remembered, finds the 
exclusive cause of development in repetitions of reactions, 
under complicated conditions which force a crossing or 
compounding of paths, in such a way that each single move- 
ment, in response to each single stimulus, tends to lose 
its identity, and to become part of a larger discharge, which 
issues in a group of movements co-ordinated for a larger 
use and function. The conception of how this compound- 
ing takes place in the organism is a purely mechanical con- 
ception ; a process of the draining of energies, first in the 
channels which are largest, most permeable, and most prac- 
tised, and then into those less and less so ; the whole group 
being called out on later occasions, as a group, as far as any 
stimulus which the organism gets, starts the central energies 
into channels adequate to effect the discharge as a whole. 

1 Loc. cit.f p. 48. 



Habitual Motor Attitudes. 255 

Now this conception of growing complexity, or co-ordi- 
nation in reactions, is quite in order still, on my theory of 
adaptation, and it is indeed even more reasonable than 
before. Just in as far as the organism has a means of 
its own of selecting, duplicating, or maintaining, its stimu- 
lations, by adapted movements, as the 'circular' process 
enables it to do, just in so far is a premium put upon the 
speedy fixing of great drainage channels representing these 
particular adapted movements. And, further, just so far 
is there created the tendency of other, accidental and 
more trivial, useful or useless, processes, to drain off into 
these great channels. It is only an instance of this 
that the child learns with such remarkable speed to make 
great happy adjustments, each then leading to a number 
of smaller adjustments. The early start which all organ- 
isms have in the antithesis between the two classes of 
movements which express waxing and waning vitality, and 
hedonic contrasts, all in one — this secures a splendid 
organic tendency directly in the lines of discharge which 
smaller special adjustments need to issue in, and which, 
but for this preparation beforehand, the smaller ones 
would have to make by actual compoundings among 
themselves. 

In interpreting this process more closely, in the life- 
history of organisms, two aspects of it rise to claim 
special remark — aspects which break into psychology as 
analogies, or explanations, of far-reaching importance, as 
will appear later on. 

In the first place, there is at every stage of development 
in the animal series, a certain mass of normal process, ' set 
for good,' so to speak, which the creature brings to his ex- 
periences at birth. It may be thought of, functionally, as a 



256 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

tendency of the organism as a whole, called its ' heredity 
impulse,' to take a given course of development, which 
will in a measure recapitulate the course of organic devel- 
opment antecedent to this particular stage ; and also as a 
tendency of the individual creature to acquire actions of 
particular kinds with great facility, by reason of these 
native organic pathways of discharge. The most marked 
instances of this latter are the instincts ; but the tendency 
is equally present to the performance of functions not so 
completely handed over to nervous habit, but still requir- 
ing consciousness and somewhat gradual learning ; such 
as speech, walking, standing, thumb-grasping, etc. 

Now with reference to the influence of these innate 
tendencies, it is easy to see that everything which the 
organism does will tend to conform itself if possible to 
them. New processes of stimulation will set their dis- 
charges toward these old channels. Old ways of action 
will try to serve as adequate responses to new sets of con- 
ditions. To deny this is to say that the organism can 
simply create new matter for itself at the call of any 
stimulus from without. If the organism is one, then any 
new process must fight for its life, especially for its life of 
action. For a genetic view requires us to hold that there 
is no part of an organism, no muscles, no pathways, but 
those which have arisen for a use; so if a new thing is to 
be learned, it must resist the old ways of action and super- 
cede the old ways of use, by overcoming the impulse 
which already urges the organism on, or it must itself 
accept and subsidize the old channels and muscles, and 
conform, as far as may be, to their previous habits of 
action. 

This latter is the dominating result. All new experi- 



Habitual Motor Attitudes. 257 

ences tend to lapse into old ones, to be in their effects on 
the organism identical with them, to have their differences 
rubbed off, and so to discharge through the pathways used 
by the old ones. 

This is a necessary result of any adequate view of the 
rise of neurological habits ; and we will see below that 
psychology directly and imperatively confirms it. The 
principle of Assimilation, treated in a later connection, 1 is 
a direct reflection in consciousness of this aspect of the 
law of habit. And this is only to say, as Darwin said, that 
we ought to find, in certain states of mind, attitudes struck 
which have arisen, not for use in this condition of mind, 
but in conditions of mind which feel like it in any respect. 
But the two processes do not discharge the same way 
because they feel alike ; on the contrary, their feeling alike 
is the sense that their discharge is the same way. The 
attitudes are useful in connection with the earlier stimula- 
tions, and for their sakes they arose; but they are also 
used by these other central processes which thus come 
to be 'analogous feeling stimuli* for consciousness. So 
a great mass of apparently useless processes fall after all 
under the law of 'serviceable habits.' 

But we have not yet got all the light we may — and it 
turns out to be psychological light in the sequel — from 
the consideration of these processes of compounding in 
the nervous organism. There is another great way of 
looking at the facts. The use of a given system of path- 
ways and muscles for the discharge of certain processes 
which are different from those for which the pathways and 
muscles originally arose, — this amounts, it is evident, to a 
great series of possible substitutions of processes one for 

1 Below, Chap. X., § 3. 
S 



258 Motor Attitudes and Expressions, 

another in the chain of events which a given issue of 
movement represents. Suppose, in accordance with the 
principle of 'analogous feeling stimuli,' I make a wry face 
at my physician, because the sight of him makes me feel 
in a measure as I did when I took his bitter medicines. 
Here is the substitution of a visual stimulus for one of 
taste; to an outsider, it would be inexplicable that I should 
so ' express ' myself in reference to this man. As a fact, 
emotional attitudes actually found in man and animals 
show cases of connection between the stimulus and its dis- 
charge just as remote as this, and equally unintelligible, 
until we come to see that by the usurpation of old habits 
of movement, a new experience gets permanently substi- 
tuted for an old one, in the economy of the organism's 
growth, and so the conditions of the original rise and form 
of utility of the attitude in question is hopelessly obscured. 
The evident outcome of these facts of substitution is, 
therefore, an exaggerated difficulty in telling how a par- 
ticular attitude or series of organic changes, found asso- 
ciated with an emotion, actually arose ; for not only may 
one substitution have been made in the course of race his- 
tory, but many may have been made. This is shown in 
the rise of the ' short-cuts ' described in my earlier discus- 
sion of the theory of Recapitulation. 1 The development 
of one process or function may be so necessary, and its 
substitution for another, and its usurpation of the discharge 
processes of that other, so complete, that the other may 
quite disappear, or be so overlaid with newer superseding 
functions as to be a mere rudiment, an apparently useless 
appendage to the organism's life. But the fact that we 
can thus account for such cases, on the theory of service- 

1 Above, Chap. I., §§ 3, 4. 



Habitual Motor Attitudes, 259 

able habits, is itself a sufficient reason for doing so. For 
it thus brings the whole life of organic reaction under the 
one principle of development. 

This has also a very extraordinary application to the 
facts of consciousness. I shall show in a later chapter 
that it is this principle of organic substitution that lies at 
the basis of memory, and gives us an adequate genetic 
theory of the function of representation as a whole. And 
further, and still more surprising, it enables us to see that 
it is by the ' circular' or imitative form of reaction, that 
the higher motor functions have had their rise. For in 
cases where man, animal, or animalcule, acts in a way 
which does not seem to be imitative, — does not seem to 
have as its objective point the maintenance or reproduc- 
tion of a particular kind of stimulation, or ' copy,' — in 
all these cases, the principle of substitution comes in to 
remove the difficulty. We find that in these cases the 
original discharge processes of a reaction which was dis- 
tinctly imitative, which did arise as a special adaptation 
to a particular sort of stimulation, have been usurped 
by a substitute stimulus, image, sensation, etc., and so 
completely, that the original stimulation, image, sensa- 
tion, etc., which really effected and accounted for these 
processes in accordance with the law of utility, has been 
utterly blotted out. The case is argued later in some 
detail under the caption ' principle of lapsed links,' J so I 
need only say here that this idea of 'analogous feeling 
stimuli,' tacked on by Darwin, merely, to the end of the 
formula for associated habit, becomes, in the higher reaches 
of psychological development, an explaining agent of the 
widest application. 

1 Below, Chap. IX., § 3, and Chap. X., § 2. 



260 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

One further point must be noted. We are asked how 
it is that there are certain kinds of activities which are 
not only expressive of mental states, but are actually seized 
upon and developed by man for just the purpose, and no 
other, of expressing himself to others, — speech, gesture, 
song, music, fine art, etc. These certainly seem to make 
simple expression an end in itself, and their importance is 
so great that society could not exist without these means 
of inter-communication between man and man. What, it 
may be asked, was the original utility of such actions 
apart from the conveying of a meaning from one being to 
another ? 

It is easy to see, however, that true as this is, — and 
its importance is fundamental to social psychology, 1 — it 
makes no exception to the law of utility. For, of course, 
the conjoint action, the gregarious life, the conveying of 
meanings from one individual to another, is an acquire- 
ment itself profoundly useful to the individual and to the 
race. So to say that certain movements originally acci- 
dental, or diffuse, or hedonic — these last mainly, it seems 
— did convey meanings to other onlookers, is only to 
say that these movements themselves are adjustments for 
utility, as truly as are the movements, for example, which 
secure food. And that these expressive actions are 
selected, and these expressing beings, is only a result of 
serviceable associated habit. The evolution of hand- 
writing, as an engine of expression, from the rude draw- 
ing of objects, shows that the first tracings were fitted 
to perform just this use, and did so. They therefore sur- 
vived, and were refined upon for this very utility. 

In short, expression is itself an utility. ' Expression for 

1 See my proposed volume of ' Interpretations.' 



Habitual Motor Attitudes. 261 

expression's sake/ the formula which we so often hear, is 
nonsense. What is really meant by it is conscious expres- 
sion, known to be expression, and ratified for the sake of 
social utilities. 

A further factor in the ontogenetic acquirement of emo- 
tional attitudes and expressive functions is at once so im- 
portant and so obscure that I only mention it here ; it has 
detailed treatment later on. I refer to the fact mentioned 
also by Darwin, and discussed by Romanes, Mantagazza, 
and others, that the young of animals, and especially young 
children, get most of these functions by direct conscious 
imitation of their elders. The child first really learns what 
certain emotions are, by imitating the indications of them 
which it sees in the faces of older persons. We will see 
later that this tendency to imitate is really the higher 
conscious form of the very way of getting all useful actions 
which we have seen in lower organisms, the ' circular pro- 
cess ' way ; and so instead of presenting a new class of 
facts, it only serves to carry the principle of 'circular 
reaction ' into the higher reaches of conscious function. 
In conscious imitation we have an instinct in which the 
very method of adaptation has been embodied, has be- 
come a habit. After knowledge arises, and voluntary 
selection, the first thing necessary to the individual in 
order to direct his life is to find out about all possible 
experiences ; so the child imitates everything, thus secur- 
ing in its own feeling, by this its own act of laying hold 
on experiences, the way of judging of things — and the 
material of its judgments — as to their relative value for 
further cultivation, and their relative difficulty in pursuit. 1 

1 This is developed below in Chap. XI., § 3 (which, however, cannot 
well be read without the earlier sections on Imitation) ; its social and educa- 
tional ' Interpretation ' is reserved for my later volume. 



262 Motor Attitudes and Expressions. 

That great theatre of experience, that splendid natural 
kindergarten, the spontaneous games of children and ani- 
mals, plays of all kinds, is a practice ground in imitative 
semblances of what is afterwards life's serious business ; 
and the young learn how such things feel by these imita- 
tions of them, and so get prepared for their actual onset in 
later life. 

Looking back now upon all the facts which the various 
1 principles,' so called, are used to explain, we find a very 
mixed condition of things covered by the usual phrase 
'expression of the emotions.' There are utility elements 
whose rise by adaptation is plain ; utterly refractory convul- 
sive elements, whose lawlessness to all but mere discharge 
is evident ; partially useful elements which had their origin 
in uses which they no longer serve ; elements whose use- 
fulness is clearly outlived and which are falling rapidly into 
decay — 'rudimentary organs,' as the biologists are wont 
to say, — and various groups of confusions evidently due to 
the grinding, erosion, rivalry, of developmental processes 
among themselves. And with all this, we find masses of 
associated organic movements — in the bowels and vaso- 
motor system, with bizarre and uncouth sensations, such 
as flesh-creeping, shivering, back-crawling, fainting, etc. — 
shifted and shunted from one connection to another, till 
they seem to have no reason nor measure in their place 
and function. But the unreason of it all is itself reason- 
able, as we now see ; and we have no right to complain at 
results which we have reason for expecting from the carry- 
ing out of our own principles. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Organic Imitation. 
§ I. The General Question. 

We may now proceed to examine more carefully the 
type of reaction in which we have found both Habit and 
Accommodation to have their rise. 

It will be remembered that we found the life process 
issuing in a great twofold adaptation, — expansions and 
contractions, — and we saw that the former represent wax- 
ing vital processes. Then we went on to say that all 
special adaptations are secured by the new hold upon 
beneficial stimulations reached by these expansive, out- 
reaching, movements. Thus a * circular ' activity is found 
in operation; life processes issuing in increased move- 
ments, by which in turn the stimulations to the life pro- 
cesses are kept in action. It will also be remembered that 
we found it necessary to postpone to the present chapter 
the further consideration of this type of activity. 

In our consideration of suggestion we discovered an 
activity of a similar kind also, a ' circular ' activity. We 
found it well to describe the child's imitations in terms of 
very similar import, and it has been intimated that, since 
consciousness, of which imitation is generally considered a 
characteristic, is probably never absent from living organ- 

263 



264 Organic Imitation. 

isms, possibly these two cases of ' circular ' activity might 
turn out to be one and the same thing. 

Let us now examine this circular type of reaction some- 
what more closely, finding our clue without more ado in 
the analogy between the kind of nervous reaction which 
we have already seen to fulfil the conditions required by 
the preceding theory of development, and the mental 
function called Imitative Suggestion} 

This has the added advantage that it throws our fur- 
ther investigations on the side of psychology, and we 
have the problem of accounting for mental development, 
although we shall consider it throughout as a new stage 
in the general problem already set for solution in the 
treatment of biological development. 

Imitation is a matter of such familiarity to us all that 
it goes usually unattended to : so much so that professed 
psychologists have left it largely undiscussed. Whether 
it be one of the more ultimate facts or not, we now seem 
to have some evidence that it has never had its due in 
psychological theory. If we shall be able to trace its 
influence in the developed mind, even that will not be 
without its reward ; but it may be possible that the law of 
the organic processes can be shown to be capable of an 
interpretation similar to that of the mental. 

We may make it a part of our assumption at the start — 
what I have endeavoured to prove above — that an imita- 
tion is an ordinary sensori-motor reaction which finds its 
differentia in the single fact that it imitates : that is, its 
peculiarity is found in the locus of its muscular discharge. 
It is what I have called a ' circular activity ' on the bodily 

1 See above, Chap. VI., § 4, and Chap. VII., §§ 1-2. 



The General Question. 265 

side — brain-state due to stimulating conditions, muscular 
reaction which reproduces or retains the stimulating con- 
ditions, same brain-state again due to same stimulating 
conditions, and so on. The questions to be asked now are 
these : Where in our psycho-physical theory do we find 
place for this peculiar * circular ' order of reaction ; what 
is its value in consciousness and in mental development, 
and how does it itself arise and come to occupy the place 
it does? 

It may be well to repeat that we might expect to find 
imitations — using the word for the present in this broad 
organic sense — wherever there is any degree of inter- 
action between a living organism and the external world. 
The effect of imitation, it is clear, is to make the brain 
a 'repeating organ,' i.e., to secure the repetitions which 
on all biological theories the organism must have, if it is 
to develop. The muscular system is, as Eimer and others 
show, the expression and evidence of this fact. The 
place of imitation in life development is, therefore, theo- 
retically solvable in two ways: (1) by an examination 
of living creatures for actual imitations, and (2) by the 
deduction of this function from the theory of repetition 
in neurology and psychology — this latter provided we 
find that Nature does not herself present an environment 
sufficiently constant to give enough repetitions to supply 
the demands of neurology and psychology. If this last 
condition be unfulfilled — that is, if Nature do actually 
repeat herself through her stimulating agencies, light, 
sound, etc., sufficiently often and with sufficient regularity 
to secure nervous and mental development — then imita- 
tion may be a side phenomenon, an incident merely. In 
that case the old biological theory, which uses habit alone 



266 Organic Imitation. 

with lucky chance, and takes no account of the nervous 
process of pleasure and pain, or the function of conscious- 
ness, in securing accommodations, remains available. But 
I have already criticised that view. 

Without taking up these questions again, I wish, while 
citing incidentally cases of the occurrence of imitation, to 
show the importance of repetitions and of the imitative 
way of securing repetitions, in the progress of mind, and 
thus to supply further support to what I may call the 
' psychological theory of development' outlined in the 
earlier pages. 

If it be true, at the outset, that organic development 
proceeds by reactions, and if there be the two kinds of 
reaction usually distinguished, i.e., those which involve 
consciousness as a necessary factor and those which do 
not, then the first question comes : In which of these 
categories do imitative reactions fall ? Evidently in large 
measure in the category of consciousness; the child is 
usually conscious of what he imitates. If we further dis- 
tinguish this category in as far as it marks the area of 
conscious life which is ' plum up,' so to speak, against the 
environment — directly amenable to external stimulation 
— by the word 'suggestion,' we have thus marked off the 
most evident surface features of imitation. Imitation is 
then, so far, an instance of ' suggestive reaction ' — another 
phrase now sufficiently well defined. 1 And this is the 
most evident meaning of the term ' imitation ' in popular 
and strictly psychological usage. We shall therefore 
proceed out from this more popular conception. 

Now let us look more closely at this kind of conscious- 
ness, and find its analogies. A mocking-bird, we say, 

1 See above, Chap. VI. 



The General Question. 267 

imitates a sparrow, a beaver imitates an architect, a child 
imitates his nurse, a man imitates his rector. Calling the 
idea of the result which the imitator is supposed to have 
some dim or clear consciousness of, the ' copy/ we find 
that we are forced to consider this ' consciousness of the 
copy' very different in these several cases. The copy 
is clearly denned, certainly, in the child's mind when he 
imitates a movement ; and also in the man's mind, although 
it is very much more complex and associative, when he 
imitates his rector. But we have a very different state of 
consciousness in the parrot or mocking-bird, and this is 
true even more strikingly in the case of the beaver. In- 
deed, these four cases are typical divisions in the psychology 
of action, i.e., volition (the man), suggestion (the infant), 
reflex action (the mocking-bird), instinct (the beaver). 
Yet suppose I make any one of four remarks to an ordi- 
nary man on the street: 'the beaver's dam is a good imi- 
tation,' or 'the mocking-bird's song is a good imitation,' 
or 'the child's movement is a good imitation,' or 'the 
man's conduct is a good imitation ' — this working man 
would understand me and accept the opinion with no 
further explanation on my part and no further questioning 
on his part. 

We see, therefore, that even in popular language, these 
so-called kinds of action have something in common, and 
that the word ' imitation ' is not greatly strained in ex- 
pressing this common element. There is in all the in- 
stances some kind of constructive idea, a ' copy,' in more 
or less conscious clearness, which calls the action out, and 
which it is the business of the imitator to reinstate or 
bring about somehow for himself. Now, this is just what 
I wish to inquire into : the nature and significance of this 



268 Organic Imitation. 

* copy ; ' aiming, if possible, to show how all the forms of 
action which show this common element could have 
arisen, and what principles of development they imply. 



§ 2. The Neurological Question. 

On the physiological side, the simple imitations of child> 
hood present the purest type. And the law of repetition 
in neurology must be brought in, in some way, to supply 
its nervous basis. No one probably will be disposed to 
deny this. We find it possible, also, just as soon as we 
bring to mind the action of accommodation and habit, no 
matter what theory we adopt of their mechanism, to show 
that the element common to the child's imitations, and all 
the other instances mentioned, is very plain. Current 
theories agree that voluntary reactions repeated tend to 
become organic as direct suggestions; that the nervous 
process becomes smooth through habit; that suggestions 
repeated tend to become still more independent of con- 
sciousness as secondary automatic and reflex reactions, by 
the same principle; that reflex reactions, when repeated, 
co-ordinated, and inherited, or selected from congenital 
variations, become instincts. All this is simply and plainly 
habit; and habit is due to repetition, no matter, again, 
how it is secured. 

But it is just as clear to current thought that the whole 
process works also the other way. Instincts are con- 
stantly being snubbed, contradicted, disused, modified, 
until all that is left is an instinctive torso, a fragment, a 
tendency merely, and this we call, in psychology, impulse ; 
and these impulses, when recognized, ratified, indulged, 
work up into volitions again. Now, all this reverse process 



The Neurological Question. 269 

is due to the principle and fact of accommodation, so 
familiar to us in view of our earlier discussions. And 
here, again, we may speak only of the facts, leaving out of 
account all the theory of how it is done. 

All this so far is so evident to current thought, that only 
details are now discussed in the books. It only remains, 
therefore, to ask whether the self-sustaining type of ner- 
vous action, that which is actually present in the child's 
conscious imitation, — i.e., eye-stimulus, then central pro- 
cess, then movement of the child's own member, which 
itself reinstates the same eye-stimulus — whether this is 
present from the first stages of evolution. If so, then 
habit and accommodation as depicted in the earlier chap- 
ter will do the work by its aid ; and psychological develop- 
ment can be read as a chapter of biological evolution. But 
if not, then when in the organic series did conscious imita- 
tion arise, and why ? For as sure as it is that conscious- 
ness gives us imitation at all, so sure is it that the nervous 
system performs, without any violation of its ordinary meth- 
ods, the circular process by which the imitation goes on. 

This question, I insist again, as I have above, is an 
urgent one, and admits of only two possible answers : 
either the neurological analogue of imitation was present 
from the first, and in conscious imitation becomes explicit 
as mental accommodation, or it has come in somewhere in 
the biological series. I have already said that the second 
alternative might be true, allowing a certain amount of 
development under constant conditions before the rise of 
special differentiated movements of expansion and contrac- 
tion — as much development as is represented by simple 
habit in very low organisms whose life is a round of recur- 
ring stimulations and reactions. 



270 Organic Imitation, 

But it is difficult to see how reactions which represent 
habit merely could get much complexity. In a constant 
environment they would soon exhaust the compounding of 
results due to variety of stimulations. And if the environ- 
ment changed, this compounding of habits would only 
make the organism more rigid and less able to adapt itself. 
The only solution of this point — simply slurred or not 
seen by most biologists — is that adopted by Spencer in 
his law of heightened nervous discharge; but this only 
gave a new factor, which served historically to bring in 
the nervous process of pleasure and pain, and so to lead 
to the other alternative given above. We have instances 
of what mere habit will do, in higher organisms, in the 
endless repetitions of the same sounds by the weak-minded, 
by children, and by parrots — continued muscular tension 
kept up by circular discharge until nervous exhaustion 
ensues. This is characteristic of the cataleptic condition 
also, as I shall have occasion to remark below in speaking 
of aboulia. Such persons do not develop or grow. They 
are like wound-up mechanical devices, as far as a living 
organism can in any case be compared with such a self- 
repeating mechanical device (say a swinging pendulum), 
which never gets exhausted nor grows. 

We should expect accordingly to find evidence of the 
imitative, i.e., self-sustaining, type of reaction in very 
early organisms. 

There is, in fact, a distinct trend in recent biological 
thought directly toward a construction of this kind. In- 
deed, this view of nervous adaptation is in line, I think, 
with the most important and thorough contributions lately 
made to the theory of organic movement. Two recent 
investigators have summed up evidence which supplies, 



The Neurological Question. 271 

in great part, the basis long desiderated for a theory 
of muscular action and development. Eimer 1 has stated 
the facts which make it probable that all the "morpho- 
logical properties of muscle are the result of functional 
activity." On his view contraction waves leave markings 
which account for both muscle-fibres and striation. The 
series of stages in the development of voluntary muscle 
which biological science is now cognizant of is very strik- 
ing. That there are no anatomical divisions corresponding 
to the striation of muscle is shown by recent observations. 
It remains, then, only to find a physiological conception of 
contraction which, while applicable primarily to unicellular 
creatures, provides for the development of the organism 
and the differentiation of its parts by repetition of function 
with progressive adaptation. Natural history requires, in 
the words of Engelmann, that " every attempt to explain 
the mechanism of protoplasmic movement must extend to 
all the other phenomena of contractility." 2 

This requirement a recent theory of contractility, that 
of Max Verworn, seems to me, in its type? to go far toward 
supplying, accordant as it is with the detailed histological 
results of Kiihne, Schultz, Engelmann, and others. The 
outcome of Verworn' s work is a chemical theory of con- 
tractility which rests upon two known cases of chemical 
action. Kiihne has proved that the oxygen of the air has 

1 Zcitschrift filr wissen. Zoologie, LIIL, suppl. Bd., p. 67. See also many 
of the detailed positions of Eimer's great work, Organic Evolution. 

2 Quoted by Soury, Revue Philosophique, July, 1893, P- 45« 

3 Die Bezuegung der lebendigen Substanz (Jena, 1892). Verworn's work 
is well summarized by Soury (see last note) . Cf. Burdon Sanderson's remarks 
on * Chemiotaxis ' in Nature, Sept. 14, 1893^.471. I say 'in its type,' 
since the particular chemical mode of stimulation which Verworn makes 
exclusively the basis of life may not be, and probably is not, the only kind of 
stimulus to which the organism effects the same typical kind of circular 
reaction. 



272 Organic Imitation, 

chemical affinity for the outer layer of particles of a proto- 
plasmic mass. The elements set free by this union find 
themselves impelled toward the centre by their affinity for 
the nuclear elements. This new synthesis releases elements 
which again move outward toward the oxygen at the sur- 
face. 1 Thus there are two contrary movements : away from 
the nucleus, or expansion, and toward the nucleus, or con- 
traction. Considering the oxygen action as stimulus, we 
have thus a reaction which keeps up the action of its own 
stimulus, and thus perpetuates itself, giving just the type 
of reaction which my theory, outlined above, calls ' imita- 
tion.' Verworn pushes the claim of this type of vital 
action right up through all the forms of muscular action — 
just as Eimer finds only the one type of function necessary, 
with repetition, to account for all the morphological varia- 
tions. I am certainly, therefore, in touch with biological 
authorities in claiming that this type of reaction is essential 
to neurological development; and especially so when we 
come to see, in what follows, that the progress of con- 
sciousness can be accounted for in stages corresponding, 
in its great features, with the stages of differentiation 
required by the physiological and anatomical theories. 

Further, recent researches on the behaviour of unicellu- 
lar organisms and of plants show the same kind of so-called 
selective or ' nervous property/ with antithetic adaptations 
of attraction and repulsion. These creatures develop not 
by remaining still and awaiting the accidental repetition of 
stimulations by storming or assault. On the contrary, 
they do exactly what we have long thought it the exclusive 
right of higher conscious creatures to do ; they go after, 

1 The exhaustion of the nucleus by stimulation is shown by the work of 
Hodge, Changes due to Functional Activity of Nerve Cells (Boston, 1893). 



The Neurological Question. 273 

or shrink from, a stimulating influence, according as its 
former impression has been beneficial or damaging. In 
other words, they perform reactions of the stimulus- 
maintaining, or imitative, type. Binet 1 draws the conclusion 
that protozoa have memory, choice, volition; that is, as I 
should prefer to say, they behave as though they had. 
Bunge, in his lectures on physiological chemistry, after 
describing the actions of certain ' apparently quite struc- 
tureless ' creatures, Vampyrella and Colfiodella, says : " The 
behaviour of these monads in their search after food, and 
their method of absorbing it, is so remarkable, that one 
can hardly avoid the conclusion that the acts are those of 
conscious beings." " Later on," says a writer in the British 
Medical Journal? " he gives the still more remarkable case 
of the orcellae. Whenever an attempt is made to place them 
in an inconvenient position, they are always able by the 
development of gas bubbles of appropriate size and at the 
proper spot, to right themselves . . . etc. ' It cannot be 
denied,' says Engelmann, ' that these facts point to psychi- 
cal processes in the protoplasm.' " Late researches show- 
ing the effect of lights of different colours upon these 
elementary creatures, is also in evidence. They swarm 
into certain lights and avoid others. Certain bacteria 
distinguish the trillionth part of a milligramme of certain 
substances in solution — showing lively attraction — quan- 
tities which the tests of chemical reaction and the finest 
chemical balances fail to detect. If extract of meat be ex- 
posed near these creatures, which feed on it, they swarm 
toward it from afar, crawling over one another. But just 
as soon as a little poisonous extract, in the most minute 

1 Psychic Life of Micro-organisms. 

2 May 12, 1894, p. 1027. 



274 Organic Imitation, 

quantity conceivable, be added, the bacteria fly from the 
mouth of the tubes in haste, with all the external signs 
of intelligence and fear. 

In regard to plants, the recent evidence of their active 
responses to stimulations of all kinds by extension and 
retraction is simply remarkable. Pfeffer has shown the 
conditions of the perpetual movements known as geotro- 
pism, hydrotropism, heliotropism in plants. The fact of 
twining movement in the tendrils of various plants has 
been subjected by this investigator to delicate tests. He 
finds that the tendrils of the pea will twine about a thread 
of silk which exerts a pressure of only the ioo,oooth part 
of a milligramme, while the force of the wind and the rain 
or the constant pressure of a stream of mercury, have no 
effect whatever. The tendrils distinguish between liquid 
and solid touches. A wound upon a plant is a signal for 
a movement of protoplasm throughout the entire plant, 
and a migration toward the damaged part. "It is," says 
Pfeffer, "just as if the plant had the power of moving 
itself. Its sensibility is developed to the highest degree, 
and it reacts to light, heat, contact, electricity, and chemi- 
cal influences." 1 The researches of Hegler show that if 
a weight be attached to a growth stem of a plant, greater 
mechanical strength is developed in the stem to withstand 
the weight, a fact analogous to the fact shown by Waller 
that an isolated muscle is able to do more work when a 
greater demand is made upon it in the way of resist- 
ance. 2 Growing roots show enormously increased growth 

1 Pfeffer's 'Address at the first general meeting of the Society of German 
Naturalists and Physicians,' at Nuremberg. See Revue Scientifique, Dec. 9, 
1893, and Nature, April 19, 1894. 

2 Brain, XV., p. 388. 



The Neurological Question. 275 

power when resistances are put in their way. The fruit 
buds of certain plants resist the action of gravity, growing 
upward, as long as the germinal vescicles are uninjured. 
All the other parts of the buds and flower may be cut 
away, but it still grows serenely up. But only let the 
germinal vescicles be removed — parts which in size and 
weight are infinitesimally smaller than these others, and 
the whole bough sinks toward the earth. 

The theory adopted by the great botanist mentioned, 
Pfeffer, in explaining these phenomena, falls in so easily, 
up to a certain point, with those of Eimer and Verworn al- 
ready described, that it even suggests the via media which is 
required by the doctrine of accommodation through the law 
of ' excess ' expounded in the foregoing pages. Says Pfef- 
fer : " Having a view to all the particulars in the process of 
reaction and its effects, we find that the essential principle 
of all these phenomena is to be looked for in the produc- 
tion of a central organic response (Auslosung, detente, release, 
or ' trigger-action '). This is the only definition which covers 
all the phenomena. : . . And it clearly results from it that 
irritability is never simply the result of the stimuli which 
bring out the reaction ; these only serve to discover the prop- 
erties and the specific agencies of the organism itself, and 
that the whole proceeding is due to the peculiar energy of 
the organism. ... A simple mechanical action, for example, 
which represents an equivalent transformation of energy, 
does not constitute an irritation, although in the chain of 
phenomena due to irritability, there is more than one such 
transformation ; for there is never irritation without an 
external or internal stimulant which sets in play the poten- 
tial energy of the plant. Here we are dealing with phe- 
nomena of another order than those of a membrane 



276 Organic Imitation, 

drawing in water by stretching, or of a cell filling itself 
by osmose, or finally of a branch bending under a weight." 
Further, in certain kinds of reaction, such as heliotropism, 
etc., Pfeffer points out the ability of the organism to 
1 release ' its energies again and again to the same stimulus, 
and so to keep its processes a-going : " However little the 
ensemble of effects follow the release automatically, never- 
theless the organism may prolong a reaction once provoked, 
or, after reacting, re-establish the state favourable to the re- 
action." 1 Uniform conditions, also, such as air, tempera- 
ture, etc., he holds to be constant stimulation by which the 
organism is kept in a state of static or recurrent contrac- 
tion. Plants continue to grow in forced directions some 
time after being again set free. " If the temperature re- 
mains constant, the plant finds itself in a state of static 
irritation — a condition necessary to vital activity. It is in 
this sense that certain permanent influences are general 
and absolute conditions of the functioning of the organ- 
ism." 2 This, it is clear, is in full accord with the theory of 
Verworn and with the oxygen discovery of Engelmann, 
and recognizes the ability of the lowest organisms to pro- 
duce already reactions of the circular or imitative type. 

The general theory of Auslb'stcng, or 'trigger-action,' 
stated by Pfeffer, is as old, he says, as his work on Phys- 
iology (1881), and his Osmotische Untersuchungen (1877), 
and he also traces it to Dutrochet (1832). This is inter- 
esting, I think, on account of its close approach to the 
heightened nervous energy of Spencer, which also turns 
upon a storing up of potential energy. Yet I am not able 
to discover that Pfeffer uses this ' excess ' storage for pur- 

1 Revue Scientifique, loc. cit., p. 741. Italics mine. 

2 Pfeffer, loc. cit. 



The Neurological Question, 277 

poses of the further adaptation of the organism : a limita- 
tion of view which could not well be avoided in observing 
the actions of plants alone, which do not, as animals do, 
learn new adapted movements before our very eyes. He 
seems simply to recognize it as there, to account for reac- 
tions actually observed. 

Of course this class of facts, which show the same kind 
of selective reaction in lower organisms as in the higher, 
where consciousness is present, 1 may be used to support 
a certain dualism of chemistry and life. This is done 
among some later biologists, the so-called ' new vitalists ' ; 
but psychologists are becoming so familiar with the prob- 
lems which demand a reconciliation of form and content, 
and so willing, for purposes of science, to state everything 
in terms of content, that this need not trouble them much. 
It is well to recognize, however, that if organic and mental 
accommodation are, as I am endeavouring to prove, one 
and the same thing, then the psychologist may have more 
right than is customarily given him of solving the dualism 
in this particular case by interpreting even the affinities of 
chemistry after analogy with the selective function of con- 
sciousness. 

The bearing of the present condition of neurological 
research is now sufficiently evident from the evidence 
cited. Whatever else it shows, this is clear, that wherever 
there is life there is irritability, nervous property. Further, 
wherever there is life there is the spontaneous selection 
of stimuli and the motor adaptations necessary to it. 

1 See an interesting collection of additional facts showing the ' nervous 
property ' in low organisms, in Orr, Theory of Development and Heredity, 
Chap. IV. The authors cited are so easily accessible that I do not quote fur- 
ther from very many available instances. 



278 Organic Imitation. 

Wherever there is life there is means of continuing advan- 
tageous stimulations by drawing up to them by active move- 
ment, or by other actions whose evident purpose is the same. 
Such a property could only have arisen by the natural 
selection of the organisms which were endowed by varia- 
tion or otherwise (or by its abrupt appearance with life 
itself), with a central physiological process of a kind by 
which the contracting energies of the organism were 
directed into certain favourable pathways and withheld 
from other pathways. This is the principle of * motor 
excess \ as worked out above. 

All this is equally true of the reactions which are con- 
sciously selective or inhibitory; the two great agents of 
such selection being attention, and pleasure and pain. 
I accordingly claim that the evidence of biology is in 
favour of the conclusion that the phenomena of ' excess ' 
in unicellular creatures are, in some way, the nervous 
analogues to these conscious functions. How they are 
involved in pleasure and pain states of consciousness has 
already been touched upon in part. The theory of the 
rise of attention is to follow below. 

Again, the adaptation of all organisms is secured by their 
tendency to act so as to reproduce or maintain stimulations 
which are beneficial. In this way only can new reactions 
be made available for repetition, and so secured to habit. 
But this reaction, which tends to secure a continuation 
of its own stimulation, is exactly the nervous process 
of conscious imitation. Hence we may say that all 
organic adaptation in a changing environment is a phe- 
nomenon of biological or organic imitation} 

1 The use of the word ' Imitation ' in this wide sense has been justly criti- 
cised ; but I am at a loss to suggest a better term. Besides, it is the essence 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association. 279 



§ 3. The Physical Basis of Memory and Association. 

In the nervous processes so far sketched we have, I 
think, the adequate basis of the development of an organ- 
ism up to a certain point. It is evident that, in it all, the 
organism is directly dependent upon the actual stimulating 
agencies of nature. Sensations, perceptions, objects, are 
necessary to call out the reactions characteristic of it. 
And who would expect that the organism could in any 
way escape this dependence ? Yet we have already found, 
in the fact of pleasure and pain reactions, that the organ- 
ism takes active attitudes toward the sources of stimulation 
and thus in a measure turns the events of its environment 
to better account. But this is only the start : the marvels 
of development are not yet well begun ! 

Is the occurrence of any reaction, we may ask, possi- 
ble in the absence of the external stimulus which is suited 

of my contention that the method of organic adaptation is by reactions of this 
identical type with further repetitions of them. The term ' adaptation ' 
is too general. ' Repetition,' the word used by the biologists, is too narrow, 
since it is only repetitions brought about in part by the organism itself which 
I have in mind, not all repetitions, as the old biological theory of adaptation is 
accustomed to hold. One of my correspondents — and so also a critic in the 
Academy — thinks Habit covers it ; but it is just my point that it does not cover 
it. I am asking just how habit could ever have started in an organism — apart 
from fortuitous lucky chances. Of course this method of adaptation itself 
becomes a habit : the fact of imitation by children shows it. But the main 
function of the thing even then is that of breaking off habits by the new 
actions which the child learns through its imitations. If any one will suggest 
a more happy term for the reaction which is at once a new adaptation to 
any sort of stimulation and the beginning of a habit or tendency to get that 
sort of stimulation again, I shall hail it gladly. In the meantime I use the 
word which expresses the type to which the reaction undoubtedly belongs, 
even at the risk of being charged with a desire to psychologize the facts 
of biology; but I do not wish, of course, to prejudice the argument by a word 
ill-used. 



280 Organic Imitation. 

to start it ? Evidently it is not possible, unless there be 
some way whereby the energies of the reaction in question 
may be started by something equivalent to the working of 
the original external stimulus. 

We have seen how it is that the organism goes out to 
find its stimulus by a kind of imitation ; we now find the 
still more remarkable fact for which this is only the prepa- 
ration — but the necessary preparation — the fact of mem- 
ory. Memory is, as everybody says, on the bodily side, the 
reinstatement in the nervous centres of the processes con- 
cerned in the original perception, sensation, etc. ; this much 
at least, whatever else it may involve. These processes, of 
course, tend always, when started, to issue in movement, 
just the same, no matter how they themselves are started. 
So the function of the reinstatement of processes in the act 
of memory is, in respect to the tendency to action which 
these processes arouse, exactly the same as that of the 
processes of perception, sensation, event, which furnished 
the original of the memory. 

But in memory the object or thing remembered itself 
is absent ; yet inasmuch as its proper reaction in move- 
ment comes about just the same, we have a new stage in 
what is still our old friend the ' circular,' the ' stimulus- 
retaining ' reaction. It gets started from the brain centres 
to be sure, but it aims, just the same, to bring about the 
consequences which it did when it was directly started by 
the sense-stimulation. It aims, that is, to bring the organ- 
ism into touch with the stimulation itself again if it be a 
desirable one, or, in contrary cases, to get the organism 
away from the stimulation. 

This is accomplished in the organism by an arrange- 
ment whereby a group of processes, corresponding to what 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association. 281 

we call in consciousness 'copies for imitation,' some of 
them external as things, some internal as memories, con- 
spire, so to speak, to 'ring up' one another. When an 
external stimulus starts one of them, that starts up others 
in the centres, and all the reactions which wait upon these 
several processes tend to realize themselves. So, many- 
reactions which, but for this, would never get stimulated 
except when the actual material stimulus is there, are 
started by and with others whose stimuli are there. And 
with the multiplying of these secondary or remote ways of 
stimulation, the more and more varied and complex habits 
of the organism come to be less and less dependent upon 
the particular external events of the world, and more 
capable of remote stimulation through senses which origi- 
nally did not constitute their stimulus, but which by this 
organic ' conspiracy,' called — I may as well anticipate — 
association, come to do so ; while the increasing variety of 
the conspiring elements — constantly recruited from the 
new experiences of the world and all represented by cer- 
tain nervous processes — make up a large and ever larger 
mass of connected centres, which vibrate in delicate coun- 
terpoise together. 

The arrangement thus sketched, therefore, is the physi- 
cal basis of memory. A memory is a copy for imitation 
taken over from the world into consciousness. Memory is 
a device to nullify distance in space and time. It remedies 
lack of immediate connection with the come-and-go occur- 
rences of the world and makes the organism to a degree 
independent of them. Every act I set myself to do is 
either to imitate something which I find now before me, 
or to reproduce, by my own action, something whose ele- 
ments I remember — something whose copy I get set 



282 Organic Imitation, 

within me by a ' ring up ' from elements which are events 
or objects in the world now before me. 

The neurological theory so far advanced, with too great 
brevity, is along the lines first announced, possibly, by 
Tarde. 1 Tarde's theory, which I find obscure, is improved 
in quotation, and endorsed by Sighele. 2 It may be analyzed 
into two factors, i.e., (a) the securing of repetitions by imita- 
tion, a speculative idea based upon the mere fact that ani- 
mals and man do consciously imitate ; and (J?) the theory of 
memory, considered as a means of perpetuating and com- 
plicating the effects of repetition in mental development. 
This latter factor I find only vaguely and inadequately 
stated by Tarde. It is readily seen that his view, also, 
assumes the fact of conscious or semi-conscious imitation, 
makes of it an original endowment or kind of social in- 
stinct, and is, in so far, open to the objections which may 
be urged 3 against such a position from the point of view 
of development ; for one of the great problems of the 
theory of development is to account for instincts of all 
kinds. And, moreover, of all instincts the social are pos- 
sibly the most complex and the latest. They involve a 
great measure of the individual organic and mental attain- 
ment found in memory, imagination, emotion, etc. 

The theory which I am now proposing, on the other 
hand, supplies this lack. It gives a derivation of imitation 
based upon an analysis of the imitative reaction itself. 
This analysis — the outcome of which I have expressed by 
calling imitation a ' circular reaction,' i.e., one which tends 



1 Les Lois de r Imitation, Chap. III.; published earlier in an article 
Qu'est-ce qu'une Societe," Revue Philosophique, XVIII., 1884, p. 489. 

2 La foule criminelle, pp. 42 ff. 

8 Cf. Bain, Senses and Intellect, 3d ed., pp. 413 ff., mentioned again below. 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association. 283 

to keep up its own stimulating process — gives us a means 
of denning imitation and fixing the limits of the concept. 1 
The third and fundamental factor, therefore, which the 
development stated above, compared with the earlier 
theories, endeavours to supply, is the theory of the rise of 
imitation itself from the simple vital processes of an or- 
ganism through the occurrence, among ' spontaneous life 
variations ' of creatures whose vital discharges are move- 
ments of the ' circular ' type, which tend directly to secure 
the repetition or maintenance of certain good stimuli. 
And, in like manner, the suppression of reactions which 
are damaging or useless follows, for by that very fact they 
lower the vitality of the organism and so hinder their own 
recurrence. This derivation of imitation secured, we are 
able to develop independently the two principles urged 
by Tarde and Sighele, on both sides, the bodily and the 
mental. 

We reach now a new stage in race history. As habit 
goes on forming, accommodation enters in a new form. 
New reactions which prove to be beneficial, have them- 
selves to become matters of habit, have to be accommo- 
dated to by the organism as a whole, have to be taken up 
into the network of conspiring processes which represent 
the sum of adaptations to date. Here it is that the prin- 
ciple of association largely gets its astonishing value in 
nervous and mental development. 

We have found reason to think that mere repetition with 
association would not suffice for development, and that the 
principle of * organic imitation ' must be added, for the 

1 Cf. Tonnies' remarks on Tarde's book in Philos. Monatshefte, 1893, p. 298, 
showing the need of more definition in this whole field. 



284 Organic Imitation. 

reason that association alone would simply render habits 
more compact. This is true also in higher development 
after the process of memory comes ; yet here association 
has much wider application. For example, a child does 
not learn to speak by merely getting his accidental vocal 
muscular sensations associated with the significant sounds 
which he makes, though I know that that is a wide-spread 
view. For at that rate of learning the number of words 
in his vocabulary would be less than the number of days 
in his life. On the contrary, he yields to his tendency to 
imitate all sounds, and by strenuous effort succeeds, thus 
getting a great number of significant sounds and their 
necessary muscular sensations. This, now, becomes asso- 
ciation's opportunity to show the manner of its action — a 
chance it could not have had otherwise. And it does. 

Nervous association does two things. First, it does 
here what it has been seen to do in the lower organisms : 
it binds sense of stimulus and sense of movement together. 
The child who has learned to make a sound, then makes it 
by association whenever he hears it. But second, associa- 
tion does more, — and here comes in the tremendous 
influence of the fact which I have been describing by the 
phrase ' central conspiracy,' — association brings differ- 
ent reactions together as wholes; it links together the 
elements of copy at the centre, so that a stimulus may 
produce, not only its own associated reaction, but, by its 
association with another stimulus, or with the memory of 
that other, it may suffice to produce the reaction associated 
with the second stimulus, or a third, fourth, etc. This we 
have already seen in the fact of ' substitution ' in the mat- 
ter of emotional attitudes. 1 

1 Above, Chap. VIII., § 4. 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association. 285 

The play of this form of association and its importance 
appear on the mental side in the detailed facts of con- 
scious association. This is mentioned below and traced 
further. Suffice it to say that the brain is a great mass 
of such sensory and motor processes bound together by 
* association fibres,' all attesting the growth of the organ, 
as a whole, by the action of association upon simple func- 
tions. The fact that brains differ from one another only 
in degree of associative complexity, and the further fact 
that all complex brain functions arise from the complica- 
tion of simple reactive functions, these facts are now 
axioms of physiology. There are two general truths 
involved, however, which are suggestive for our present 
topic. 

The actual exercise of the most complex voluntary func- 
tion involved in thought and conduct involves the motor 
apparatus which is also used by the simple reflex pro- 
cesses. 1 This has further mention in the chapter on 
Volition. We are able to see now more clearly the 
reason for it. The new more complex functions are born 
out of the old simple ones by this principle of organic 
association. They are higher co-ordinations in which the 
lower enter as necessary elements. The apparatus of the 
old cannot be superseded ; that would take away the basis 
for the new. All development is evolution. When an 
object approaches my eye, the lid flies to. But I use the 
same muscle when I will to wink my eye. In the one 
case, I stimulate the motor process by a percept or memory 
process, associated with the motor lid-movement process ; 

1 See Chauveau on * The Sensori-motor Nerve Circuit of Muscles ' in 
Brain, 1891, pp. 145ft., and Exner on « Senso-mobilitat ' in Pfliiger's Archiv 
fur die gesammte Physiologie, XLVIII., 592 ff. 



286 Organic Imitation. 

in the other case, the same motor process is stimulated 
by an outside event. 

The evident fact to be noticed, then, is that the more 
fixed of the two sides — sensor and motor — of the neural 
apparatus is the motor side. It represents the habits, the 
organism's own repeated responses by apparatus which 
the different senses and the higher mental processes use 
in common. It also represents the great antithesis of ebb 
and flow in the vital processes into the terms of which all 
sorts of stimulation are translated. While the sensory 
side represents the shifting, varying life of stimulation ; 
the relativities, the modifications, the reasons for accom- 
modation, in short. The sensory centres have been likened 
by James to a funnel, which pours its flood down into the 
motor channel. Stimulations can be accommodated to 
only as far as the processes they excite can be drawn 
off successfully in the motor channels established by 
habit. Motor-habit, then, is the measure of nervous and 
mental unity. As we shall see below, 1 the sense of it 
affords largely the permanence, identity, self-persistence 
of the whole mental system. 

A second fact of great importance arises from the 
increased complexity of associations in the brain. We 
have seen the elements of it in the association which one 
sensory process may form with a certain motor process 
through its earlier association with another sensory process 
more directly connected with the same motor process. The 
oft-cited instance of the burnt child dreading the fire 
is a case of it. The burn is at first associated organ- 
ically with the withdrawing movement ; but the sight of 
the blaze also entered originally into the complex experi- 

1 Chap. X., § 3, and Chap. XL, § i. 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association. 287 

ence of the fire. So the sight of the blaze now comes to 
bring about the withdrawing movements directly, although 
it was only the burn and its pain which were the dynamo- 
genie agents capable of doing it. Or, put in terms of 
pleasure and advancing movements : the child sees — 
tastes — grasps an apple. The next time he sees an 
apple, he grasps at it before he gets the taste. If we note 
well that the first order is imitative, i.e., taste, then grasp- 
ing to secure the taste again, and note also that it is by 
simple association, merely, that the real stimulus, taste, 
disappears largely from the series — we are at once able 
to give a new meaning to the principle of association. The 
original imitative type seems entirely to disappear from 
the act as soon as the child gets the second order, seeing 
— grasping — tasting ; and yet without imitation, the 
reaction necessary to the association itself would not have 
been learned. It is possible to say, therefore, as our 
former chapters would lead us to expect, that each new 
accommodation secured by central nervous development 
is not new at all in principle, but rests directly upon imita- 
tion and association. Its characteristic feature, however, 
is its complexity. And this complexity is of such a kind 
that reactions seem to lose altogether the stimulus-repeating 
or imitative character which they had to have at first. 

On the nervous side, this result is secured by the forma- 
tion, between different brain areas, of direct connections, 
which take the place of the round-about connections first 
painfully learned. Pathology is full of cases which illus- 
trate it. Speech is learned by direct imitation through 
the ear, but afterwards gets to be stimulated through the 
eye; that is, a direct connection is formed from the op- 
tical verbal to the motor speech centre, and takes the 



288 Organic Imitation, 

place of the course through the auditory verbal centre. 
And it is now common doctrine, as I have said above, that 
the briefer, more automatic functions may represent, by 
neurological short-cuts, processes which at first required a 
longer series of processes. 

This is the secret, also, this fact of associative short- 
cuts, of the abbreviating of phylogenesis by ontogenesis, — 
already noted above. 1 It may be well to repeat the point, 
now that we have had so much to do with neurology. Once 
let such a short-cut get so well established that it repre- 
sents a more powerful organic tendency or habit than the 
longer process which in its genesis it represents ; or once 
let the short-cut break in upon connections formerly used 
by the long — and this result it becomes the business 
of heredity or natural selection to preserve. The child, 
in his own growth, cannot develop instincts for the per- 
formance of activities which he is also to learn to perform 
voluntarily ; for the acquisition of volition involves the 
use in new forms of the very elements which would be 
held fast in the fixed reflexes of instinct. He is accord- 
ingly born a human infant without developed instincts, 
not a brute with them. His nervous system in its embry- 
onic development does not fully carry out all the details of 
its ancestral history, but abbreviates them by a short-cut 
direct to the volitional stage, omitting the instinctive stage 
almost altogether. Darwin notes the same falling away of 
certain simple social emotions which in his view lie at the 
basis of the ethical, when once these ethical feelings have 
become well established. 2 

i Chap. I., § 4. 

2 Exp. of the Emotions, p. 69. I see hardly any limit to the application of 
this principle in the hands of evolutionists. Whatever seems native, h priori, 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association. 289 

We are able, therefore, in view of the foregoing expo- 
sitions, to make the following general statement : the 
nervous action of the cerebral centres concerned in memory 
is sufficiently accounted for as a development from the simple 
reactions of organic contractility \ in accordance with the 
principle of * organic imitation ' already defined. In these 
higher functions the principle of habit as applied to com- 
pounded reactions takes on the broader form commonly 
known as 'association? 

And yet one additional remark. Just as soon as the 
copy for imitation becomes a matter of memory, a thing 
rung up in the nervous centres and so already fully there 
in the organism, both in its sensory presence and in its 
motor worth, then it is no longer a thing to be accommo- 
dated to. It is then a thing already accommodated to. 
Its influence then is to fix more and more steadily the 
reaction associated with it at first by effortful imitation, so 
that its present imitation — its circular process — is now 
an agent of habit. Notice the great utility of the infant's 
incessant repetition of its own sounds, words, movements, 
etc., in exercising the organs and strengthening its nas- 
cent powers. The same is seen in the scale of race 
progress — a species refining and fixing what it has already 
acquired — in the fixing of instincts through the instinctive 
imitation of some animals by others, by their young, etc., 1 
made much of by Wallace. 

may be held to be an outcome whose preparatory stages have been lost by the 
principle of abbreviation. See my own use of it, below, in finding the genesis 
of the sense of identity and sufficient reason (Chap. XI., § i). 

1 Observations bearing on this latter aspect of the case, with quotations 
from Wallace and Romanes, are cited by Morgan, loc. cit., pp. 454 ff.; such 
as the constant dependence of certain birds' nest-building instinct upon the 
sight of their home nests, etc. 



290 Organic Imitation. 

As the processes in consciousness fall away, the reac- 
tion becomes almost reflex. So by the extraordinary 
cunning of the organism, the very means of its new 
adaptations, that by which its old habits are modified and 
broken up, its imitative reinstatement of its experiences 
even at the high level of memory, this becomes itself a 
thing of habit, just as it does at the lower level of simple 
motor adjustment ; sinks down to the lower levels of brain 
co-ordination ; and is found actually in the child and in 
animals as an instinct to imitate. But in the child the 
instinct to imitate is a matter of consciousness. The 
mental copy, seen, heard, remembered, is set up and 
aimed at ; imitation is no longer the organism's weapon ; 
it is now the sword of mind, as the following chapters on 
* Conscious Imitation ' aim to make clear. 



CHAPTER X. 

Conscious Imitation (begun); the Origin of Memory 
and Imagination. 

§ i. Certain General Facts and Explanations. 

We are now clear of neurological considerations in the 
main, and may trace the development of consciousness. 
The place of consciousness in phylogenetic progress has 
already come up for notice, and we have been able to find in 
consciousness a higher sphere of organic accommodation. 
That is, it seemed necessary to assume the analogue of 
the nervous basis of pleasure and pain very early in the 
life series, in order to get any complexity of development 
at all. Assuming, moreover, the truth of our theory of 
development as now sketched, which bases it, from the 
start, on the two factors, contractility, and the pleasure and 
pain analogue found in central ' excess,' we ought now to 
find the further development of consciousness an illus- 
tration of the same processes. 

The rest of our discussions, therefore, may turn upon 
further analyses of conscious states, whose reason for 
being is evident only when we connect them with the 
function of consciousness in development as a whole. 
And as it is the essence of our doctrine of accommoda- 
tion that the imitative reaction is the type of all organic 

291 



292 Conscious Imitation. 

accommodations, our further interesting task becomes that 
of tracing and explaining the presence of imitation in the 
development of consciousness. 

We may preface our detailed treatment of this topic 
with two statements already put in evidence, both of which 
are the clear outcome of current psychological opinion. 
I quote them from my earlier work, in which they appear 
as the natural result of a statement of nervous structure 
and function in its relation to consciousness, written for 
purposes of exposition only. 

"All the phenomena of consolidation or 'downward 
growth,' on the one hand, illustrate what is known as 
the law of Habit ; all the phenomena of specialization, 
or 'upward growth,' illustrate the law of Accommodation. 

"As for Habit: Physiologically, habit means readiness 
for function, produced by previous exercise of the function. 
Anatomically, it means the arrangement of elements more 
suitably for a function, in consequence of former modifica- 
tions of arrangement through that function. Psychologi- 
cally ', it means loss of oversight, diffusion of attention, 
subsiding consciousness. 

"As for Accommodation : Physiologically and anatomi- 
cally, it means the breaking up of a habit, the widening of 
the organic for the reception or accommodation of new 
conditions. Psychologically, it means reviving conscious- 
ness, concentration of attention, voluntary control — the 
mental state which has its most general expression in what 
we know as Interest. In habit and interest we find the 
psychological poles corresponding to the lowest and the 
highest in the activities of the nervous system." The 
application of these conclusions, especially those italicized, 
will be plain as we go on. 



General Facts and Explanations. 293 

The books on psychology which have had the courage 
to say anything about imitation — and they are few — 
have generally, by what they said, only tended to justify 
the conservatism of those who had not the courage. It 
has been a topic of extraordinary neglect and confusion. 
One of the latest authors 1 makes certain statements about 
imitation which may be considered typical of the uncer- 
tainty which seems to shield itself behind eclecticism. 

He says (p. 218) : "Since it only begins to appear about 
the fourth month, when simple voluntary action directed 
towards an end is also first recognizable, it is possible that 
imitation is acquired"; then (219), "As a rapid reaction 
of a sensori-motor form, it has the look of a mechanical 
process ... in many cases there seems to be no conscious 
purpose. . . . There is much to favour the view that it is 
purely ideo-motor and so sub-volitional" ; then (219, note), 
" It is pointed out by Gurney that imitation plays a con- 
spicuous part in the hypnotic state" ; and again (219-220), 
" Imitation follows on the persistence of motor-ideas having 
a pleasurable interest. . . . The child does not imitate all 
the actions it sees, but only certain ones which specially 
impress it. . . . Hence in most, at least, of a child's imi- 
tation there is a rudiment of desire. For the rest, the 
abundant imitative activity of early life illustrates the 
strength of the playful impulse, of the disposition to 
indulge in motor activity for the sake of its intrinsic 
pleasurableness " (italics his). Again (109), he makes 
imitative sympathy instinctive. 

And yet if we examine these separate statements, we 
find that they rest generally upon fact, and it becomes 
evident that the need in this topic is a theory of the reac- 

1 Sully, The Human Mind. 



294 Conscious Imitation. 

tion in question which will cover facts drawn from an area 
wider than that which individual or analytic psychology 
is usually called upon to cover. It may therefore be taken 
as the legitimate task of such a theory as mine, which not 
only recognizes imitation but endeavours also to explain 
it, to set in order the array of facts cited by current psy- 
chologists. 

Fact i. The late rise of conscious imitation in the 
child : sixth or seventh month. This fact may be ac- 
counted for on the very evident ground of the distinction 
of inherited habit from the new accommodations of the 
individual child. The child's early months are taken up 
with its vegetative functions. The machinery of heredity 
is working itself out in a new individual. Further, acci- 
dental imitations struck by him do not give pleasure until 
the senses are sharpened to discern them, and until the 
attention is capable of its operations of comparison, co- 
ordination, etc. ; before this there is no element of pleas- 
ure in the happy successes of imitations, to lend its influence 
for the continuance of them. As soon as these conditions 
get fulfilled, however, we find not only that the child 
begins to show germinal imitations, such as the monoto- 
nous repetition of its own vocal performances (ma-ma-ma-), 
but also that its nervous connections give it an instinctive 
tendency to biological subconscious reactions, distinctly of 
the imitative type, such as the walking alternation of the 
legs. In the main, therefore, there is instinctive tendency 
to functions of the imitative type and to some direct 
organic imitations ; but those clear conscious imitations 
which represent new accommodations and acquirements 
are not as such instinctive, and so come later as individual 
acquirements. 



General Facts and Explanations. 295 

Fact 2. Imitation is often a simple sensori-motor reac- 
tion without conscious purpose, e.g., it is involuntary. 
This is so evident that I have based an important dis- 
tinction on it in an earlier chapter — that between 'simple' 
imitation, considered as ' suggestion,' and 'persistent' imi- 
tation, which turns out to be the first typical exhibition of 
volition. So it is in hypnotic conditions, imitation is there 
ideo-motor suggestion. This means that, after all, imitation 
considered as a type of reaction, is organic and inherited. 
It has its place among race habits. Infants show remark- 
able differences, for example, in the readiness and facility 
with which they learn to speak. This does not arise from 
difference in practice, for practice never overcomes the 
difference ; but it is due to differences in the instinctive 
tendencies of the infants to a reaction which is, par excel- 
lence, imitative in its type and method of development. 1 

On this basis it is possible to admit the truth of the 
first fact cited, that many imitations are late acquisitions 
in the child's first year, and are, therefore, phenomena of 
accommodation and acquired things involving volition or 
purpose ; and, at the same time, admit reflex imitations 
and explain them. 

Further, our theory requires, as a matter of fact, just 
this state of things. Volition would be impossible without 
this great class of quite involuntary sensori-motor and 
ideo-motor, as well as purely biological reactions, which 
fall under the imitative type, and which represent instinc- 
tive inherited tendencies to movement. In more unde- 
veloped consciousness, further, we find that the purely 
suggestive influence of a ' copy for imitation ' may be so 

1 The same is true of handwriting : cf. Romanes, Ment. Evolution in Ani- 
mals, p. 194. 



296 Conscious Imitation. 

strong, as is remarked below, that reactions follow despite 
their painful character: a fact which would be impos- 
sible on the theory that all voluntary action is acquired 
under lead of the pleasure-pain association, without such a 
basis of native tendency. The law of habit, which exhibits 
itself in the inherited motor tendencies I have spoken of, is 
in these cases too strong for the law of accommodation 
through pleasure and pain, and works itself out in conduct 
in opposition to warnings of temporary damage to the 
organism. 

Again, not only is this true of imitation itself consid- 
ered as a phenomenon. It is true of all motor acquisi- 
tions, i.e., that they become instinctive in some cases, and 
yet must be acquired in others. I have already pointed this 
out in the case of many instincts and of emotional expres- 
sion. The chick is born with full-fledged space instincts ; 
man acquires ' intuitions ' of space relations, and in such a 
finished way that Kant thinks them native. Beasts in 
many cases seem to inherit their vocal cries ; man learns 
his speech, indeed, but learns it so well that it gets to be 
reflex, as is seen in certain aboulic patients. And in many 
cases the original process of learning is seen to be iden- 
tical with imitation from the fact that many animals do 
not learn their characteristic cries, as birds their songs, if 
they do not hear adults of their kind make such sounds, 
although they apparently never consciously imitate their 
adults at all. The instinct of imitation is so bound up in 
all these race acquisitions or habits that its exercise is 
often necessary to bring them out. 

Fact 3. Children are more imitative than animals, 
with one or two striking exceptions, such as monkeys, the 
mocking-bird, etc. This is due simply to the fact that 



General Facts and Explanations. 297 

the child's life, as heredity has laid it out for him, is to 
be largely one of acquisitions or new adjustments, while 
the animal's is to be one of repetitions of race habits or 
old adjustments. In the words of Preyer, 1 "the more 
kinds of co-ordinated movement an animal brings into the 
world, the fewer is he able to learn afterwards." The 
child is par excellence the animal that learns ; and if imita- 
tion is the way to learn, he has ' chosen the better part ' in 
being more imitative than the rest. He is born with a 
more ' broken up ' or mobile nervous organization, because 
his immediate ancestors have had full consciousness and 
volition, whose function is to secure new adaptations 
by choice, memory, etc., in opposition to the old reflex 
adaptations of animal instinct. The long period of his 
infancy has come with this mobility and relative helpless- 
ness, to give him time to acquire these higher conscious 
adaptations. 

Animal imitativeness is generally understated, however. 2 
The most social animals, including man, are the most 
imitative, as we would expect from what is said below 
about the imitation factor in the social consciousness, and 
this would seem also to give us an explanation of the 
strength of the imitative tendency in certain animals which 
show it strongly marked. 

Another reason for the difference is to be found in the 
fact that we are usually looking for a particular kind of 
imitation in the cases of animals — the imitation of acts 
which they do not normally perform. The animals have so 
much instinctive endowment that most of their perform- 

1 Physiologie des Embryos, p. 545. 

2 Cf. the remarkable performances of dogs, cats, birds, etc., in the way of 
imitation given by Romanes, Evol. of Mind in Animals, Chap. XIV. 



298 Conscious Imitation, 

ances are taken as a matter of nature, and only those clear 
cases of imitation are noted which are novel and rare. 
Yet it is probable that many of the most ' innate ' powers 
of the animals are brought out, perfected, and constantly 
kept efficient, by the imitation of their own species. In 
these cases the presence of imitation can only be detected 
by the artificial separation of mate from mate, young from 
young, etc. ; but interesting cases of crippled performances 
in circumstances of such separation are coming to light, 
such as the abortive crowing of young cocks, the failure 
in barking of young dogs, the loss of the form of nest- 
building in young birds, when the example of their elders 
is ruled out in these instances respectively. 

Fact 4. The tendency to imitate may come into direct 
conflict with the prudential teachings of pleasure and pain, 
and yet may be acted upon. A child may do, and keep on , 
doing, imitations which cause him pain. 

This may be readily explained when we take the facts 
simply in hand, and rid ourselves of current doctrines of 
ethics and theories of conduct. If imitation is anything 
like the fundamental fact which the foregoing account 
takes it to be, — the means of selection among varied 
external stimulations, — it becomes evident in what ways 
pleasure and pain may be related to such reactions. Pleas- 
ure and pain are now seen to be the index of a change 
brought about by a stimulus or by a reaction itself consid- 
ered as a new stimulus. The repetition of this stimulus 
is desirable, and this is secured by further imitation. The 
pleasure is enhanced by the repetition, which thus aims at 
securing the continued presence of the * copy ' ; that is to 
say, the pleasure accruing is something additional to the 
copy or 'object* which the original reaction aims at. 



General Facts and Explanations. 299 

The observation of young children directly and plainly 
confirms the truth of this position. The child invariably 
reacts at first upon objects, presentations, things present 
to it. So in some circumstances, suggestion, serving to 
urge him on to new accommodation, or simply calling out 
an old habit into exercise, works in spite of the pleasure or 
pain to which it gives rise. I have illustrated this above 1 
with concrete cases from infant life. Romanes finds it in 
the animal world. 2 Pathology is full of striking illustra- 
tions of it. 

Further, the transition from this nai've suggestibility to 
the reflective consciousness in which pleasures and pains 
become considerations or ends, is marked in the life-his- 
tory of the infant. He learns to dally with his bottle, to 
postpone his enjoyment, to subordinate a present to a dis- 
tant pleasure, by a gradual process of reflective self-control. 
He gradually grows out of the quasi-neutrality of habit to 
be a reflective egotist. 

In adult life it is undoubtedly true that we usually do 
things because we like to do them and stop doing them 
when they hurt, but even then it is not always so. Just 
as the little child sometimes acts from mere suggestion, 
at the same time moved to tears by the anticipation of 
pain to result from it ; so to the man a copy may be 
presented so strongly for imitation, it may be so moving 
by its simple suggestiveness, that he acts upon it even 
though it have a hedonic colouring of pain. The prin- 
ciple of accommodation requires that it be so, for other- 

1 Chap. VI., § 3, on ' Deliberative Suggestion.' 

2 " There is abundant evidence of one individual imitating the habits 
of another individual, whether the action imitated be beneficial or useless " 
{Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 220). 



300 Conscious Imitation. 

wise there could be no development, except within the 
very narrow range afforded by accidental discharges. No 
new adjustment or adaptation could be effected without 
risk of pain and damage. If the child never reacted in 
any way, but in pleasurable ways guaranteed already by 
its inheritance or by its experience, how could it grow ? 
So if we sought only what we have already grown to like, 
how could new appetites be acquired ? The ethical truth 
that pain is a schoolmaster, that we cannot dispense with 
its discipline and also grow — this truth holds for the vital 
organism and its reactions as well. 

But the question then remains : How is this possible, if 
the criterion of what is advantageous is pleasure, and if 
the organism has developed all the way through on that 
principle ? How can imitation, dictated itself by pleasure 
and pain, come to conflict with the indications of pleasure 
and pain ? 

The answer to this seeming difficulty is evident when 
we remember one of the points already made. The accom- 
modation-reaction — the imitation dictated by pleasure and 
pain — is so regular in its kind, giving the circular process, 
and involves organic elements so much the same, that it 
has itself become a matter of habit. The tendency to 
imitate has thus become a hereditary thing, given by 
endowment in the motor organism. The idea of a move- 
ment has become, as psychologists so often tell us, itself 
a tendency to perform that movement ; yea, the very 
beginning of the movement. The child is therefore ac- 
tuated by all the impetus of race history to imitate, to 
use his own motor apparatus upon every hint which he 
gets of a movement, and this tendency takes, of course, 
no account of exceptions. The pain, therefore, in which 



Origin of Memory and Association of Ideas, 301 

a certain new reaction results is, at first, only a partial 
check upon the reaction. It is, of course, in so far a new 
accommodation, and works by association, as far as it can 
do so, to inhibit the movement ; but its influence is 'up- 
hill.' It cannot once for all undo the old inherited ten- 
dency. And for a long time the latter wins the day. 

When reflection begins, however, and with it volition, 
then the case is altered. Volition is not possible until just the 
breaking up, modifying, snubbing, of inherited habit, which 
it is the office of new pains and pleasures to bring about, is, 
to a degree, already accomplished. And volition is no more 
than just the ratification of this break-up, and the further 
accommodation to the conditions which have brought 
about the 'break-up.' Man then becomes an agent. He 
reflects upon both the old and the new, and his choice 
represents the best adjustment into which all the elements 
and tendencies within him may fall for future reaction or 
conduct. But then the fight with the dictates of pleasure 
and pain may become only more open, in the degree in 
which, in his deliberation, he may discern the permanent 
adaptations represented by self-denial, social co-operation, 
etc., as opposed to the temporary ones of pleasure and 
pain. 

§ 2. The Origin of Memory and Association of Ideas. 

The neurological function already described as 'the 
physical basis of memory,' 1 and the manner of its rise, 
will at once suggest the psychological doctrine as well. 
We have found the organism developing a system of central 
ganglia and connections for the purpose of being relieved 
of its dependence upon direct sense-stimulation. By this 

1 Above, Chap. IX., § 3. 



302 Conscious Imitation. 

arrangement the processes corresponding to the memory 
of these sense experiences are aroused, from within, from 
other centres, or from without indirectly, by associated 
processes, in lieu of the action of the real original object. 
Such a process thus started gives to consciousness the 
picture or image of the object, which we call a 'memory.' 

If, now, to keep within consciousness, the original sen- 
sation-content, — the stimulus which it is the business of 
the reaction to confirm' by repeating, or to banish by fail- 
ing to repeat, thus illustrating imitation, — if this be con- 
sidered as respects the reaction which it arouses, then we 
may have the same function in kind ascribed to the mem- 
ory copy as to it. But the reaction will then have another 
office ; its province will be to enable the organism to 
anticipate experiences, the consequences of which it has 
once suffered or enjoyed. It thus performs its life-preserv- 
ing reaction before the real stimulus comes, and so secures 
benefit, or avoids damage. The child remembers the flame 
and the pain, and withdraws before the fire touches him. 
He remembers the apple, and the pleasure, and secures the 
fruit for himself by reaching. 

Further, we have seen how, on the neurological side, the 
processes ring one another up, so that one may release the 
reaction which originally belonged by right of imitation 
only to another. The question on the side of conscious- 
ness, as to how the different ' copies ' get to ring one 
another up, in such a system, is the question of association. 

They can at first act together, it is plain, only as far as 
the original external things are together. For example, 
you speak a word ; I at once write it. I can do this because 
I heard the word sound when I saw the written word and 
learned to trace it. To-morrow, by reason of a brain lesion, 



Origin of Memory and Association of Ideas. 303 

I am unable to write the word when I hear you speak it, 
but I can still copy the word when you set it before me. 
The lesion has simply deprived me of the use of the internal 
visual copy which I imitated in writing, by cutting the 
writing-reaction apparatus off from its connection with the 
auditory seat from which this visual copy was accustomed 
to be ' rung up.' But the simpler imitation of the external 
visual copy remains possible. A step further : I see a man, 
and at once write his name. Here the visual image of the 
man rings up the auditory image of the name-word, this 
rings up the visual copy-image of the written word, and 
this I imitate by writing. But all of these images were 
once real external things to me and existed together, in 
my learning, by various twos and threes. Yet if any one 
had asked me why I wrote the man's name, I would have 
said : ' Because I remember it.' Each one of these images 
is itself a 'copy for imitation,' when needed for its own 
appropriate reaction, and only by this association does this 
typical character become obscured. A young child, on 
seeing the man, would say 'Man,' i.e., would imitate the 
auditory copy which the sight of the man rang up. And 
a certain child of mine would probably hasten to ask for a 
pencil in order to draw the man, thus imitating the sche- 
matic outline man fixed in her memory by earlier efforts 
to imitate the shape of the real thing. In all these cases 
the reaction follows either directly upon an external stim- 
ulus or upon a memory image which represents another 
external thing existing at some time alongside the first. 

In other words, association by contiguity is simply the 
progress from external togetherness into internal together- 
ness, from fact to memory. Your spoken word brings up 
my written word copy. Why ? Because sound and written 



304 Conscious Imitation. 

copy existed together when I learned to write, and so on 
with all the instances. 

But suppose a perfectly new external copy rings up 
another copy which is only internal : why is this ? Thus 
a new man seen brings up an old name written. Why ? 
Evidently because there are some other elements of copy 
either external or internal which have been together with 
each ; this is association by resemblance or contrast. 
' Man seen ' and ' name heard ' were present together when 
I made the old acquaintance, and afterwards ' name heard ' 
and * name written ' were associated by contiguity. So 
when I hear the same name in conversation with a new 
face I think of the written name. The sound name, there- 
fore, has been common to both associations, and by it the 
written name arises when I see the new acquaintance. 

I have used this last example, rather than the usual ones 
of the text-books drawn from direct resemblance (a photo- 
graph suggesting a man 1 ), because it is evident that such 
association by resemblance is only a special and very open 
case of what I have called the principle of ' lapsed links.' 
In this case, the auditory sound image is just as truly a 
link between the new acquaintance's face and the written 
name of the old one, or between my images of the two 
faces, one in memory and one in perception, as actual 
similarity of feature would be. In such ordinary feature- 
resemblance both copies are in the same sense — the two 
faces are both seen. But similarity, so called, is really a 
much wider thing. Another centre — the auditory, in the 
case supposed — may come between, as a link. 

Then this link lapses. I tend to behave toward the new 
man as I would toward the old ; even speaking the same 

1 See my Handbook, I., Senses and Intellect, Chap. XI. 



Origin of Memory and Association of Ideas, 305 

name to him is behaviour, of course. The new copy comes 
to usurp, as far as it may, the reaction belonging to the 
old, leaving out the link of association altogether. 

Take another case : a musician plays by reading printed 
notes, and forgets that in learning the meaning of the 
notes he imitated the movements and sounds which his 
instructor made ; but the intermediate copies have so fallen 
away that his performance seems to offer no surface imi- 
tation at all, and pathological cases show that even the 
intervening brain processes become unnecessary, a 'short- 
cut ' being established between sight and movement. His 
hearing copy-system persists to the end only to guide or 
control his muscular reactions. But a musician of the 
visual type may go farther. He may play from memory of 
the printed notes ; that is, he may play from a transplanted 
visual copy of notes which themselves are but shorthand, 
or substitute, expressions of earlier sound and muscular 
copies ; and finally the name only of a familiar selection 
may be sufficient to start a performance guided only by 
a subconscious muscular copy series. So also in the case 
of the patient who can move a limb only when he sees 
it ; we have to suppose that his properly imitative action 
on the basis of movement memories is now performed 
through the substitution for them of visual images. 

Reflection convinces us that we have now reached a 
principle — when due weight is also given to the explana- 
tions earlier made on the neurological side 1 — of wide- 
reaching application in mental development. We see how 
it is possible for reactions which were originally simple imi- 
tative suggestions to lose all appearance of their true origin. 
Copy-links at first distinctly present as external things, and 

1 Above, Chap. IX., § 3. 
X 



306 Conscious Imitation. 

afterwards present with almost equal distinctness as inter- 
nal memories, may become quite lost in the rapid progress 
of consciousness. New connections get established in the 
network of association, and motor discharges get stimulated 
thus which were possible at first only by imitation and owed 
their formation to it. 

If this principle should be proved to be of universal 
application, we would then be able to say that every intel- 
ligent action is stimulated by imitative copies whose presence 
the action in question tends to maintain, or to suppress. 

A farther confirmation of the fact is seen in the pro- 
cess of learning to name objects. The child gets the 
required word by direct imitation of the sound heard by 
him. The application of the word to the object keeps 
his interest and stimulates his effort, but it is no part of 
his learning. But after he has learned to use the term 
easily, he speaks it directly at the object. He no longer 
needs to keep the sound copy before him, and it lapses so 
completely that if we had not been with him when he 
learned we would never suspect that the association be- 
tween name and thing was of imitative origin. He can 
name the thing only because he has imitated a sound, and 
then by association the visual image of the thing has 
usurped the reaction created by this imitation. Pathologi- 
cal cases show that this concealment of imitative origin 
may go so far that patients may be able to name objects 
seen when they can no longer imitate the same sounds when 
they hear them. 1 It is as if the son of a washerwoman 
refuse to recognize his mother when he takes the social 
position of his wife, even though the wife is spending the 
money which the humble mother has earned. 

1 See Bastian, Brain as Organ of Mind, p. 623. 



Origin of Memory and Association of Ideas. 307 

The very great importance of this principle, apart from 
the question of fact, is seen in its genetic applications. It 
exhibits the higher mental functions as a great stride in 
accommodation. Memory and association do exactly the 
same thing for the organism, later, that perception, sensa- 
tion, contractility, do earlier. Association enables us to 
react to facts which are distant from present facts but 
allied to them. Memory enables us to react to the facts 
of the future as if they were present, thus conserving 
the lessons of the past. Perception enables us to set 
present facts in their proper setting, and thus to react 
upon them with full reference to their significance. Sen- 
sation enables us to react upon facts according to their 
immediate worth to the organism. Contractility, exhibit- 
ing itself in ' organic imitation,' is the original form of 
adaptive reaction which works through the whole process 
of development. 

And with these higher reaches of accommodation, we 
now see, the method of it remains the same. Pleasure 
and pain, mixed up with the reactions of emotion, lead to 
the ' excess ' discharge which is consolidated in the atten- 
tion, and selection by attention gets its highest fruition in 
the explicit selective function of consciousness, volition. 1 

The actual dynamogenic parallel between simple sensa- 
tion, on one hand, and memory, on the other, appears in 
the different classes of 'suggestions,' known as sensori- 
motor and ideo-motor, illustrated in detail in an earlier 
place. The facts of suggestion should be constantly 
borne in mind, since they show the transitions in behaviour 
between reflexes and volitions, and bridge, in my view, 
what has been a chasm in earlier theories. 

1 See Chaps. XIII. and XIV. for the discussion of the Genesis of Volition and 
Attention. 



308 Conscious Imitation. 

§ 3. Assimilation, Recognition. 

There are several aspects of presentation and repre- 
sentation which seem more reasonable when brought into 
connection with our present topic. The principle of as- 
similation, made much of in recent discussions, clearly 
illustrates not only that a copy-image may be so strong 
and habitual in consciousness as to assimilate new expe- 
riences to its form and colour, but also that this assimila- 
tion is the very mode and method of the mind's digestion 
of what it feeds upon. Consciousness constantly tends 
to neglect the unfit, the mat apropos, the incongruous, 
and to show itself receptive to that which in any way 
conforms to its present stock. A child after learning 
to draw a full face — circle with spots for the two eyes, 
nose, and mouth, and projections on the sides for ears 
— will persist, when copying a face in profile, in draw- 
ing its circle, with two eyes, and two ears, and fail to see 
its error, although only one ear is visible and no eyes. 1 
My child H. having been told that her shadow was her- 
self, called all shadows ' ittle Henen ' (little Helen). The 
external pattern is assimilated to the memory copy, or 
to the word or other symbol which comes to stand for it. 
The child has a motor reaction for imitating the latter ; 
why should not that answer for the other as well ? As 
everybody admits, in one way or another, such assimilation 
is at the bottom of recognition, and of illusions which are 
but mistaken recognitions. 

Let us look at each of these facts — assimilation and 
recognition — more closely, from the genetic point of view. 

In what has been said of the principle of association, we 

1 Passy, Revue Philos., 1891, II., p. 614. 



Assimilation, Recognition. 309 

find ground for the reduction of its particular forms to 
the one law of assimilation. This matter has been ably- 
discussed by Wundt. 1 In assimilation — and in the 'ap- 
perception ' of the Herbartians — we have the general 
statement of all the forms, nets, modes of grouping, which 
old elements of mental content bring to impose upon the 
new. In the light of their motor effects, we are able to 
construe all these elements of content under the general 
principle of habit, and say that the assimilation of any one 
element to another, or the assimilation of any two or more 
such elements to a third, is due to the unifying of their 
motor discharges in the single larger discharge which 
stands for the apperceived result. The old discharge may 
itself be modified — it cannot remain exactly as it was 
when it stood for a less complex content. So this larger 
discharge represents the habit of the organism in as far as 
both the earlier tendencies to discharge belonging to these 
elements of content are represented in it ; but it also rep- 
resents accommodation — i.e, if the assimilation, appercep- 
tion, synthesis, is smoothly accomplished — since it stands 
for a richer objective content. Presentations are associated 
by contiguity because they unite in a single motor dis- 
charge ; by similarity, because both of them, through their 
association with a third, have come to unite in a common 
discharge. The energy of the new presentation process 
finds itself drawn off in the channels of the discharge of 
the old one which it resembles ; the motor associations, 
therefore, and with them all the organic and revived mental 
elements stirred up by them, come to identify or unite 
the new content with the old. Among these revised ele- 
ments the attention strains are of the first importance ; 

1 Pkilos. Studien, VII., heft 3, pp. 345 ff. 



310 Conscious Imitation, 

they constitute largely the sense of activity in mental 
synthesis or apperception everywhere. 

It is commonly held that assimilation stands midway 
between absolute identity of presentations, on the one 
hand, and such difference of presentations, on the other 
hand, as is found in the relative independence of asso- 
ciated ideas, such as, for example, the association ' stable — 
horse.' But this is not the true view of assimilation, for 
there is no such thing as absolute identity of presentation, 
or of mental content of any kind. Assimilation is always 
present. It is the necessary basis of the earliest associa- 
tion. For association is, as we have seen, on the organic 
side and at the start, only another statement for the con- 
solidating of the different reactions which arise when the 
stimulations are multiple or not simple. These reactions 
are reduced to orderly habitual discharges — this is associ- 
ation by assimilation, more or less adequate to give the 
sense of synthesis, or unity, or identity. Association has, 
accordingly, a motor foundation from the first. The ele- 
ments hold together in memory because they are used 
together in action. And as the action becomes one, but 
yet complex, so the mental content tends to become one, 
but yet complex also. 

This becomes more evident when we call to mind that 
the 'objects' of the external world are very complex men- 
tal constructions. They are for the most part made by 
association. Objects have some very general aspects in 
common, such as colour, resistance, odour, etc. But these 
bare qualities, taken alone, might go to constitute one 
object about as well as another ; and really would consti- 
tute none. What kind of an object such or such a bare 
stimulus shall turn out to be — this is largely a matter of 



Assimilation, Recognition. 311 

association and suggestion. Hence if the mind has to 
construct anyhow, in each case, and to depend largely 
upon memory of earlier instances for its material, then it 
falls back at once upon those habitual reactions by which 
groups of associated elements are reinstated together and 
as one content. These old groups thus usurp the new 
elements by assimilation, if it be within the range of 
organic possibility. 

Put generally, therefore, we may say that assimilation 
is due to the tendency of a new sensory process to be 
drawn off into preformed motor reactions ; these preformed 
reactions in their turn tending to reinstate, by the principle 
of imitation, the old stimulations or memories which led 
to their preformation, with all the associations of these 
memories. These memories, therefore, tend to take the 
place or stand for the new stimulations which are being 
thus assimilated. 

All perception is accordingly a case of assimilation. 
The motor contribution to each presented object is just 
beginning to be recognized in cases of disease called by 
the general term apraxia, i.e., loss of the sense of the use, 
function, utility, of objects. A knife is no longer recog- 
nized by these patients as a knife, because the patient does 
not know how to use it, or what its purpose is. The com- 
plex system of elements is still there to the eye, all to- 
gether : the knife is a thing that looks, feels, etc., so and 
so. This is accomplished by the simple contiguous asso- 
ciation of these elements, which has become hardened into 
nervous habit. But the central link by which the object 
is made complete, by which, that is, these different ele- 
ments were originally reproduced together by being imi- 
tated together in a single act, — this has fallen away. So 



312 Conscious Imitation. 

the apperception, the synthesis which made the whole 
complex content a thing for recognition and for use, this 
is gone. 

The great importance of this fact of assimilation be- 
comes more evident also when we take note more in detail 
of the nature of the motor processes by which it takes 
place. When we say that a new element is assimilated to 
old contents by exciting the motor associates, and with 
them all the other entrained associates of the old, we lay 
ourselves open to the task of showing what the motor 
processes are which are thus established by habit in any 
particular case. 

We have shown that in a developed organism, the 
i excess ' discharge which secures accommodation, by rein- 
stating a stimulus, takes on two great forms by the law 
of habit. First, we have the gross general activities of 
the muscles, reflexes, utility reactions in emotion, etc. 
already established ; and with these, second, the constant 
modifications of them made in getting new acquisitions of 
skill, etc. These represent respectively biological haoit 
and accommodation. But then we find also the more 
special kind of motor reaction upon mental content found 
in attention. This has still to be described as a more or 
less consolidated reaction upon mental contents, fixed by 
habit. We shall also see, in considering the attention, 
how it is that every mental content tends to call out the 
attention, and how, in turn, the attention modifies the con- 
tent which calls it out. There is, therefore, just as far as 
this reaction of attention upon content is a constant gen- 
eralized thing, a general demand for the assimilation of all 
contents in certain great nets or categories representing 
forms of action ; and, in particular, these mental categories 



Assimilation, Recognition. - 313 

are due to felt movements of the attention. This may be 
deferred for later discussion. But this is not all of the 
attention. We find that there is a balance of attention 
process — reflex motor influence, muscular strains here 
and there — peculiar to each great quality of content, as 
being from eye, or ear, etc., and inside of this, again, a 
balance peculiar to each particular individual content ex- 
perienced. We not only have a common attention, involv- 
ing the brow-muscles, etc., but various special attentions, 
such as visual, auditory, etc., and further, different succes- 
sive attentions for each experience of the same quality, 
i.e., let us say three successive repetitions of the same 
sight. If A be the gross movements of attention, a, a, 
a" a" may stand for the peculiar attentions to sight, 
sound, etc., and a, a', a", a" for the successive acts of the 
attention given under one of the latter, say under a. 

This means that the sense of assimilation in each suc- 
cessive experience of the same objective content varies 
with the different motor shadings of attention, just as it 
also varies for the different sense qualities by reason of the 
different motor associations, strains, etc., involved in accom- 
modating to the different sense qualities. 

Now let us see what the different cases are which will 
arise in successive presentation of the same external object. 
Let/ be a new object, a peach. A + a + a, then, by what 
precedes, stands for attention to it ; in which A gives the 
sensations of gross contraction, a gives the sensations of 
special-sense contractions, such as rolling of the eyes, etc., 
and a gives the sensations of contraction peculiar to this 
particular object only, — say the visual exploration of its 
figure. Now all this works, as we have seen, by the law 
of assimilation, changes in the content / ; / gets a lot of 



314 Conscious Imitation, 

associates attached to it by which it is brought into 
harmony or connection with earlier p's. It is put into the 
category P, the Peach. 

Now suppose that instead of being an absolutely new /, 
this / has been seen once before and so has become /'. 
Then we have again the formula for attention, A + a + a\ 
where a differs from the former a. What is this difference ? 
In consciousness I submit the difference is just this, that 
we recognize p'. Analyzed out as it has now been, we are 
able to see what this peculiar sense of recognition rests 
on. For a differs from a in two respects : first, in the 
greater ease with which the movements of the eye, etc., 
for which a stands, are made in tracing out the figure of 
/' (or whatever other contractions constitute one attention 
different from another inside the same sense-quality — 
what I call the ' motor associates ' of /'), and, second, in 
the presence of the images belonging to the earlier expe- 
rience now brought up in regular association. As to the 
first of these elements, it is the so-called ' subjective aspect' 
of recognition to be mentioned below. As to the latter 
element, it is evident that all the old images will be asso- 
ciated directly with /'. But among them will now be the 
image of memory left by the earlier experience of p. 
With this the new p' is assimilated, to such a degree that 
the two are not held apart at all, but the result is one 
object under the category P, with a group of associated 
elements. We say, then, that p' is recognized. 

Recognition, therefore, generally involves elements of 
content brought together by the process of assimilation, and 
so rests upon attention considered as a phenomenon of 
motor habit, that is, upon the more habitual ingredients in 
the attention symbolized by the A + a part of the whole 



Assimilation, Recognition. 315 

attention formula. The objective presented elements are 
of course most evident and important. Their presence is in 
so far only the familiar fact of association, which seems 
easy to understand because it is so familiar. But associa- 
tion is itself a case of looser and less effective assimilation. 
Every two elements whatever, connected in consciousness, 
are so only because they have motor effects in common. In 
association they have less in common. In recognition 
they have so much more in common that they are pre- 
sented as one, and the other elements of content associated 
with each of them in similar ways through common motor 
interests, cluster around the final outcome as the evident 
signs of the sameness of the new and the old. This is 
the fact of recognition by Nebenvorstellungen signalized by 
Wundt, under which falls Lehmann's Benennungs associa- 
tion. It is what may be called recognition by an objective 
coefficient (H off ding's Bekanntheitsqualitat) y or in current 
phrase, 'relative recognition.' 

I have before gathered up this side of recognition, based 
both upon mental analysis and objective experiment, in a 
formula which holds that the sense of familiarity with an 
object is due to the reinstatement of the apperceptive or 
relational process of the earlier presentation. 1 According 
to this formula, taken alone, single unrelated homogeneous 
images such as bell-stroke, pure colour, etc., would not be 
recognized, single complex images such as human faces 
would be recognized somewhat in the degree in which the 
complexity had impressed itself in the first perception, and 
clear recognition would arise only when the relations at- 
tentively discerned were clearly brought out in the repro- 

1 Handbook of Psychology, I. Senses and Intellect, 2d. ed., pp. 176-178, 
where the experiment given in the next paragraph is also mentioned. 



316 Conscious Imitation. 

duced state. A further result would be that images, when 
reproduced, would largely depend upon and reinforce each 
other in producing the feeling of familiarity. 

I once had an opportunity to test a little child six 
months and a half old, with these points in view, and the 
result was quite instructive. Her nurse, who had been 
with her continuously for five months, was absent for a 
period of three weeks, and on her return was instructed 
first to appear to the child simply in her usual dress, but to 
remain silent ; then to withdraw from sight, but to speak 
as she had been accustomed to ; and finally to appear and 
sing a nursery rhyme, which by special care the little girl 
had not been allowed to hear during the nurse's absence. 
The first result was, that the child gazed in a questioning 
way upon the face, but showed no positive sign of a recog- 
nition ; yet the absence of positive fear and antipathy 
shown at first toward the substitute nurse indicated that 
the visual image was not entirely strange. Second, the 
tones of the nurse's voice were not at all recognized, as far 
as passive indications even of familiarity were concerned, 
— a result we would expect from the greater purity and 
simplicity of the auditory images. The third experiment 
was attended by complete and demonstrative recognition. 
The visual face and auditory rhyme images must have re- 
enforced one another, giving again the old established 
complex apperception of the nurse. 

This case also shows, as far as any individual case can, 
that images from different senses vary greatly in intensity 
and in motor effect, especially in calling out influence upon 
the attention, in early child-life, that they are not well 
differentiated from one another, and that even at the very 
early age of six months special memories are becoming 



Assimilation, Recognition. 317 

sufficiently permanent to fix general attitudes and habits 
of action in the child. 

Observations are largely lacking as to what elements in 
the particular experiences of early childhood are most in- 
fluential in recognition. Close observations of the periods 
when children recognize pictures of familiar objects would 
throw some light upon the point. E. recognized pictures 
of a clock and a cat early in her twelfth month, and called 
them ' ti-ti ' (tick-tick) and ' ps-ps ' (puss-puss) ; but I know 
of no other exact observations. 

But it is clear that the other element in the atten- 
tion-complex is also present. There is a change in the 
a factor itself with successive appearances of the same 
/ content. This is not itself presented as part of the 
content, for it only appears in the relative ease, facil- 
ity, of attention itself. It seems to attach to the sub- 
ject, to the agent, to the ego who attends, not to the 
object or content. 1 We have in the recognition of an 
object not only the identification of it as objectively the 
same, but also a feeling of ' warmth,' ownership, self- 
reference. We do not recognize a thing simply for itself ; 
we recognize it for ourselves. It has become in a sense 
ours by having been present to us before. This is ac- 

1 Ward {Mind, July, 1893, p. 353) has pointed out the analogy between the 
feeling of ' facility ' which we have when we perform a movement a second or 
third time, and the feeling of familiarity with an object. In my view, they are 
exactly the same thing, except that in the former case the subjective, i.e. 
motor, sense is nearly or quite the whole of the feeling. In object recognition 
the objective content is still objective, but in the sense of motor facility the 
process of voluntary attention is identified directly with the movement, and 
finds in it its own appropriate outlet. The reader should also consult Ward's 
second article {Mind, October, 1894), which appears after my text is in type. 
In view of the similarity of his position and mine I may add that my view was 
published in the Philos. Review in July, 1892. 



31 8 Conscious Imitation. 

counted for by the fact that just this motor element it 
is that carries along with it the habitual attention strains, 
and these attention strains are in large part the stable, 
'identical' element in the sense of self. So self becomes 
implicated in all recognition just to the extent in which the 
attention is easily stimulated. 

Now, although we have found the objective aspect of 
recognition in the represented complexity of content just 
spoken of, — the apperceptive or associative meaning of 
the thing, — so it still remained to find the more uniform 
element of subjective reference common, in a measure, 
to different recognitions. This I find in the varying 
readiness or ease of attention in the reinstatement of the 
content by assimilation to its old image and escort ; that 
is, in the motor sensations of adjustment, which indicate 
in a series the varying degrees of strain or effort of the 
attention. 

The motor associates of each sensory intensity are, 
therefore, looked at broadly, the A + a + a factors in at- 
tention, and each such reaction of the attention, when 
taken in a particular case, has also in it a certain degree 
of readiness or ease of the a factor. This has more proof 
in later chapters which deal with ' Attention,' and the 
conditions of ' Internal Speech and Song.' When a 
presentation comes a second time into consciousness, it 
is adjusted to more easily because its apperception in 
attention proceeds upon a basis of ready formed associa- 
tion of both these kinds. The relative ease of adjustment 
is felt as the subjective aspect of recognition, and the 
consequent assimilation going on in the content itself is 
the objective aspect. 

Cases are now well known and discussed of so-called 



Its Phylogenetic Value. 319 

* absolute' recognition, in which, i.e., there are no evident 
presented associations to mediate the recognition. The 
vital question is raised : How do such recognitions pro- 
ceed ? The two clear cases known are the recognition of 
simple tones, and that of simple colours. In both these 
cases, as is now evident, the recognition is due to the 
second (a) factor which I have brought out above — the 
relative ease of attention in adjusting itself to such a tone 
or colour a second time. 

§ 4. Phylogenetic Value of Memory and Recognition. 

It need hardly be said that memory is a function of 
extraordinary value in race development. Creatures which 
have in them the faculty of anticipating experiences, 
both pleasurable and painful, by the recall of memory 
pictures in something of the original setting, and which 
can, in consequence, anticipate the actual experiences to 
secure or avoid them by an adapted reaction, are most fit 
for natural selection. Of course they survive. This has 
always been seen by those writers who have found in 
memory a product of the organic accommodation of the 
creature to its environment. But a farther word is neces- 
sary to point out the proper value for selection of the 
added fact of recognition. For a creature might well 
reproduce its experiences as memory pictures and react 
upon them well, and still not recognize them, just as pa- 
thology shows is the case in certain anaesthetic hysterics. 
These patients respond in writing to questions which they 
do not understand, or describe in writing persons whom 
they do not recognize. The whole group of facts of 
'physiological' or organic suggestions described in my 



320 Conscious Imitation. 

earlier pages 1 show the kind of ' organic memory ' which 
enables the organism to act upon an experience as if it 
recognized it, when the actual recognition does not take 
place in consciousness. What is absent in these cases is, 
as we now know, the finer motor, synthetic, adjustments 
of the attention which by their variations constitute 
recognition. 

The adaptations of most of the organisms below mam- 
malian life, and some mammals, possibly, take place, no 
doubt, by such ' organic memory.' They have conscious- 
ness and also memory in the sense of recall of images of 
past experience ; but they do not recognize these images 
with that peculiarly * warm ' sense of ownership which we 
have when we greet the familiar. The attention has not 
grown to be the medium of a sense of self, nor has its 
development gone far enough to give differentiated re- 
actions to many contents. They have what may be called 
first stage associations with what they remember, i.e. f asso- 
ciations of pleasure and pain, and of direct adjusted 
movement. 

The additional fact of recognition, therefore, must have 
a farther value than that of simple memory. And it has, 
as may be readily pointed out. 

By the recognition of an object a creature gets full 
possession of all the benefits both of immediate and of 
remote association, i.e., second-stage association, let us say. 
Recognition follows to reinforce or inhibit the reaction 
of simple memory, for it is constituted by the set-back 
wave of firm motor associates already described as neces- 
sary for the assimilation of the new to the old. It means, 
therefore, that the creature that recognizes takes a certain 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 2. 



Its Phylogenetic Value. 321 

attitude, a motor state of contraction, expansion, etc., a 
condition of readiness for the protective or defensive 
action for which the motor habits of the organism have 
grown to provide. But these may be different from the 
reactions dictated by simple memory. Recognition is a 
sense of meaning as opposed to that of bare appearance, 
and its reaction is often the violent checking even of the 
impulses due to more organic sensibility, or its revival. 
Creatures which consciously recognize, therefore, have an 
evident shield from the ills of the world and a mortgage 
upon its benefits. The dog which sees the whip only for 
the first time gets the flogging ; but the next time he sees 
the whip, he recognizes it with the immediate impulse to 
startled attention, fear, and flight. The motor elements 
which underlie are, on the theory now developed, what, in 
his consciousness, is, in part, the sense of recognition. I 
need not add that the escape of the dog from his cruel 
master is the survival of the creature that is fit to survive. 
Phylogenetically, the difference in value between mem- 
ory and recognition is only one of degree, just as the 
motor adjustments and the escort of associates of all kinds 
represented in the two cases differ only in degree of 
co-ordination and complexity. Memory of the organic 
type, without recognition, is present when there is a first- 
degree association between two sense areas, or between 
a sense and a movement area. The reaction represents 
a first-degree accommodation. But in recognition we 
have the motor organization represented by attention and 
complex central development in the cortex. Its reactions 
therefore represent all the accommodations of skill and 
art, and all the adjustments of will to the demands of 
the life of conduct. 



CHAPTER XI. 

Conscious Imitation (continued) ; the Origin of 
Thought and Emotion. 

§ i. Conception and Thought. 

Passing on to the sphere of conception and thought, 
we find a remarkable opening for the law of imitation. The 
principle of Identity which represents the mental demand 
for consistency of experience, and the mental tendency, 
already remarked, to the assimilation of new material to 
old schemes, is seen genetically in the simple fact that 
repetitions are pleasurable to the infant, and to us all, 
because of the law of habit in our reactions. Just in as 
far as a new experience repeats an old one, to this degree 
it accomplishes what direct imitation would have accom- 
plished, and so makes easy future repetitions of it, by 
the reaction born of the old. This kind of accommodation 
by repetition we have seen to be both indicative of pleas- 
ure, and in developed organisms, also, the cause of it. 
So in the fact of assimilation, we have both the method 
of central organic development, and the platform upon 
which the structure of thought must be built. To say that 
identity is necessary to thought, therefore, is only to say 
that it expresses in a generalization the method of mental 
development by imitative reaction. 

322 



Conception and Thought. 323 

In my earlier work 1 I have depicted the progress of 
consciousness through the operations of reasoning — con- 
ception, judgment, syllogism — in its search for identities, 
and I need not enlarge upon it here. The new doctrine 
of judgment, which goes by the name of Brentano, for 
the first time did justice to the demand for unity found 
everywhere in mental operations. Judgment always deals 
with one object, not two. So the mental demand for 
identity is really a demand, i.e., an irresistible tendency 
to act in one way upon a variety of experiences. Identity 
is the formal or logical expression of the principle of 
Habit. It is for logic, which deals with units and copulas, 
what smooth assimilation and swift apperception are for 
psychology, which deals with elements and processes. 

The principle of Sufficient Reason is subject to a corre- 
sponding genetic expression, on the side of Accommoda- 
tion. Sufficient reason, in the child's mind, is an attitude, 
a belief : anything in its experience which tends to modify 
the course of its habitual reactions in a way which it must 
accept, endorse, believe — this has its sufficient reason, 
and he accommodates to it. I have argued elsewhere 2 
that a conflict between the established, the habitual, the 
taken for granted, on one hand, and the new, raw, and 
violent, on the other hand, is necessary to excite doubt, 
which is the preliminary to belief. And belief follows 
only when a kind of assimilation or reconciliation takes 
place. But this assimilation of the new, the doubtful, to 
the old, the established, is only done by the union of the 
potencies for action, in a common plan of action. Belief 

1 Handbook, Vol. I. , Senses and Intellect, Chap. XIV. See also my article 
Feeling, Belief, and Judgment, in Mind, N. S., Vol. I., p. 403. 

2 Handbook, Vol. II., Chap. VII. 



324 Conscious Imitation. 

arises in the child in the readjustment or accommodation 
of himself actively to new elements of reality. Only then 
does he pass from ' reality-feeling,' which accompanies un- 
impeded habit, to belief, which comes from a new adjust- 
ment of the claims of impeded and split-up habits. 

In as far as there is truth in this view, in so far does 
Sufficient Reason become a formal or logical statement of 
the fact of Accommodation. It is for logic, again, what 
the more violent reconciliations, hard bought synthesis, 
strains to compass all in a single 'area of consciousness,' 
are for psychology. 

Put more broadly : whenever we believe a new thing or 
accept it as real, we accommodate our attitude to its pres- 
ence, we make place for it in our store of acquisitions for 
future use ; this means that we are prepared to reproduce 
it voluntarily and involuntarily, to make it a part of that 
copy system which hangs together in our memory, as rep- 
resenting a consistent course of conduct and the best 
adjustment we have been able to effect to our physical 
and moral environment. And on the other hand, anything 
which cannot get into this system is not believed ; and we 
say we do not believe it because it lacks just in this suffi- 
cient ground or reason. The fact is, that not believing a 
thing simply means that we have not been able to link it 
up and hold it in the system of copy elements which we 
have established by long and patient action. 

So here also imitation is the method by which our milieu 
of thought and feeling in all its aspects gets carried over 
and reproduced within us in a system of relationships to 
which we have learned to react. We live by faith, now, 
not by sight, because we depict truth in these relationships 
whose very establishing by our own action has given us 



Conception and Thought, 325 

the only warrant we have of their security. Our conscious- 
ness of the relationships of the elements of this reproduced 
world, as sustaining one another — and sustaining our trust 
— this is our sense of sufficient reason. Our accompanying 
sense of acceptance and endorsement of these copies as 
suited to draw out our action — this is belief ; and the 
familiarity which repetition engenders, betokens the growth 
of habit and the sense of identity. 

Conception then arises, too, and it proceeds by identi- 
ties and sufficient reasons ; and we get in this connection 
a new genetic view of the general notion. The child 
begins with what seems to be a general. His earliest 
experiences, carried over into memory, become general 
copies which stand as assimilative nets for every new 
event or object. All men are 'papa,' all colours are 
'wed,' all food 'mik.' Professor Cattell informs me that 
his little girl, after getting pain from certain bumps of 
head, etc., got to calling all bodily pain 'bump-bump.' 
And her little brother further generalized the term to 
apply to all mental discomforts, such as disagreeable emo- 
tions, fears, etc. What this really means is, that the child's 
motor attitudes are fewer than his receptive experiences. 
Each experience of man calls out the same attitude, the 
same incipient movement, the same coefficient of attention, 
on his part, as that, e.g., with which he hails 'papa.' In 
other words, each man is a repetition of the papa copy, 
and carries the child out in action, just as his own early 
response to the presence of the real papa carried him out. 
But of course this does not continue. By his learning new 
accommodations, by his having experiences which will not 
assimilate, this dominancy of habit is, in part, counteracted, 
his classes grow more numerous as his reactions do, his 



326 Conscious Imitation. 

general notions become more 'reasonable,' and he is on 
the proper way to a ' rectification of the concept.' 

The ordinary question of the rise of the ' concept ' from 
the 'percept' may, accordingly, get its answer in this 
view ; and it is well to go| a little more into details. It 
is only partially true that the concept arises from the per- 
cept at all. It is rather true that the two arise together, 
by the same mental movement, which is apperception or 
motor synthesis. Going back again to that neglected 
period, infancy, we may ask, as a matter of fact, what 
takes place. 

Suppose, after the very common method of the day, a 
single presentation, A, in the infant consciousness ; then 
suppose it removed. The child is now ready to germinate 
in two different ways, forward and backward, future-ward 
and past-ward. He remembers and he expects. Viewed as 
memory, his experience, A, is particular, a sensation, after 
a time a percept. But it includes more than his simple 
receptive state. He reacts to it, and so stands ready to 
react to it again. This readiness is his expectation, — the 
only tendency he has to a definite reaction ; and as the only 
one, it stands ready to 'go off' on any kind of stimulus which 
is locally near enough to discharge that way. His mem- 
ory then becomes a concept after a fashion. For viewed 
as expectation, it is the whole of the child's reality ; it is 
what will happen, for it is all that can happen ; he knows 
nothing else. Whatever then actually does happen is at 
first reacted to as A, and remains A, by this active con- 
firmation, if it is possible for the child's consciousness to 
keep it A. This fact that past experience, taken as rep- 
resenting future experience, is general, I may call the 
concept of the first degree. It means that at this stage 



Conception and Thought. 32 7 

particular experiences are the measure of all things, of 
things generally ; since they are all that the organism is 
accommodated to, and they are the copies to which all 
experiences are assimilated if possible. The child is under 
the reign of habit or identity. 

But as particulars increase, they limit one another, both 
in memory and in expectation. In expectation, because 
they are brought only partially under common tendencies of 
discharge in action ; in memory, because by this tendency 
to partial disunion in action they are subject to the great 
processes of assimilation, association, and inhibition. In- 
stead of A (red colour) happening, B (green colour) happens ; 
and instead of all my reds being red squares, and all my 
greens, green squares, I have red circles and green circles, 
red and green triangles, fantastic shapes of red and green, 
etc. This means two things in the growth of concepts : first, 
that my expectation is no longer of all reds, i.e., my red 
is no longer a general of the first degree. It cannot, by 
assimilation through a single motor discharge, stand for 
all colours. Green is in part refractory. So red is now 
a particular as compared with green. And, second, my 
expectation is no longer that all my reds will be square, 
for the same reason as before. There will be circular, 
triangular, irregular reds. But with it all they are equally 
red. In this respect they do assimilate, i.e., my red is 
still general as compared with particular instances of red. 
Now this particularizing of experiences in reference to 
one another is the function of perception, and this gen- 
eralizing of experience, with reference to its own single 
instance, is conception, which gives the general of the second 
degree. So conception and perception arise together. 

At the same time, experience takes on another psycho- 



328 Conscious Imitation. 

logical aspect. New experience not only adds new items 
opposed to old items, but it leads to revision of the old — 
all through the law of assimilation by means of motor 
reaction. What passed for greens turn out to be partly 
blues ; they accordingly require and secure a modified 
action ; so in my expectation of greens, I may no longer 
accept blues. So also I leave out the demand that my 
greens be either square, or circular, or triangular, i.e., I 
leave out figure. This means that in my more generalized 
motor reaction to colour, I leave out the more special eye 
explorations which contribute the figure-value to the com- 
plex content. Or, to give a more concrete example, first, 
boat is boat, with spread sails, three masts, and sailors in 
the rigging ; then sailors are dropped, sails and masts go, 
etc. What is left is ordinarily said to be abstracted, as, for 
instance, the concept colour, a quality abstracted from par- 
ticular instances. But true abstraction is not a singling 
out ; it is rather a paring down, a wearing off, an erosion, 
due to the progress in adjustment which the organism has 
been able to effect under the law of the reduction of 
motor habits by compounding. 1 Thus is reached a gen- 
eral in the third degree. It represents that which is 
essential in an experience, not only as tested by its unin- 
terrupted recurrence amid shifting and drifting details ; 
but more especially by its regular calling out force upon 
me in some great fixed way of acting. 

How experience gets collected, related, distinguished, in 
this way, is ordinarily the question of the function of con- 

1 See above, Chap. VIII., § 4. The reader may compare the treatment of 
my Handbook, I., Senses and Intellect, where conception is discussed from the 
point of view solely of conscious content, the genetic feature, — the motor 
habit involved, — not being there spoken of. 



Conception and Thought. 329 

sciousness itself. I prefer to call the process considered 
thus as mental function, apperception, and to say that both 
the percept and the concept arise by the apperceptive 
function of consciousness, to which I have given a genetic 
construction in the earlier pages. They become, on this 
view, simply different aspects of one thing — a synthesis of , 
elements. Looked at backward, the product is an event, a 
particular, a percept ; looked at forward, it is representative 
of other events, a general, a concept. 

We are now able, in summing up, to make out two 
important points for psychology, I think. First, we see 
that this so-called apperception is genetically the simple 
fact of motor habit, with the assimilations and associations 
which it gives rise to. Motor habit is the great devouring 
thing which throws its arms around all mental details and 
unifies them in its embrace. The most refined and subtile 
form of it takes place higher in attention. Attention is 
the vehicle of apperception ; as psychologists now agree it 
supplies the 'form ' to every 'content.' To say this, how- 
ever, is only to say that attention, representing as it does 
the most refined and most central forms of motor reaction 
upon revived mental content — that its adjustments are 
the medium of conception, thought, reasoning, of all possi- 
ble groupings and arrangings in the mind. Thought, 
therefore, exhibits a new stage in motor accommodation. 
It shows the organism's adjustments to the relationships 
of truth, as memory, perception, sensation, show its adjust- 
ments to those of fact. The mechanism of voluntary 
attention, by which this selection or adjustment proceeds, 
is described in a later chapter. 

The second thing which may now be said, is that this 
view shows why we have never been able to find a mental 



33° Conscious Imitation. 

picture or content for a ' general notion.' Attempts at this 
culminated but did not terminate with Hume. It is evident 
that the 'general' or 'abstract' is not a content at all. 
It is an attitude, an expectation, a motor tendency. It is 
the possibility of a reaction which will answer equally for a 
great many particular experiences. As far as there are the 
particular images which Hume pointed out, and such pro- 
cesses of composition as those made much of by Waitz, 
these are both mere partial statements of the associations 
and assimilations which have been given general treatment 
in the exposition above. 1 

§ 2. Conception as Class-recognition. 

From what has been said of the formation of the gen- 
eral notion, its relation to recognition becomes interesting. 
This point has never been made clear, I think, on any of 
the old theories. How is it that a single object is recog- 
nized as belonging to the class which is covered by a 
general concept ? It is evident that this presents a dif- 

1 1 may note the agreement intimated in the following quotations from a 
Syllabus of Lectures by Professor Royce : " All general ideas are the mental 
aspects of habits of response in presence of those general characters of things 
to which the ideas in question relate. Without motor habits, no ideas"; 
"consciously general ideas are the mental aspects of deliberately formed 
habits of response to the general characters of things; and for that very 
reason are modifiable in definite ways, and are, accordingly, more or less suc- 
cessfully adjustable to decidedly novel conditions. Of such deliberate habits 
of response the processes of language are a familiar example." " These attri- 
butes of Deliberateness and Modifiability are in general due to the Influence of 
the Imitative Function. For imitation, although founded on instinct, implies 
for its development Deliberateness and Plasticity of adjustment. Rational 
General Ideas are therefore, on the whole, products of imitation, are the mental 
aspects of imitative motor habits of response to the socially recognized general 
aspects of things." I have not seen any development of these positions, by 
Mr. Royce. 



Conception as Class-recognition. 331 

ferent phase of recognition from that which comes to view 
in the recognition of a single object as the same single 
object. Calling this further kind of recognition ' class- 
recognition,' we find it now possible to explain it. 

We found, it will be remembered, convenient, a certain 
formula in speaking of the elements involved in attention ; 
the formula A + a -f- a. A represents the fixed, habitual, 
always-present strains, stresses, organic movings, etc., in- 
volved in every act of attention. This element involves 
the stable elements of the sense of self, and so carries 
self-recognition or personal identity in all acts of memory. 
This is the extreme case of recognition on the habit side. 
The third element, a, further, has already been seen to 
give us, in its changes from one to another experience of 
the same object or content, the sense of recognition at the 
other extreme, the accommodation extreme, the absolute 
recognitions to which objective complexity may be largely 
absent. Now, in the middle, in the a element, we find the 
very common fact of class-recognition accounted for, in 
the main. The formation of class notions we have seen 
to be by union, coalescence, of motor processes, with 
assimilations of new elements of content to old habitual 
schemes. Now the attention is directly implicated in all 
these class formations. Indeed, it is by the training of 
attention in this way that the most stable class divisions 
are formed, i.e., those which mark off the great quality- 
types of mental processes. One's attention is visual, or 
auditive, or motor, as it gets habitually exercised with one 
or other of the senses. 1 So the elements, in an act of 
attention, which arise from the contractions peculiar to one 

1 This is taken up in some detail in the chapter on Attention (Chap. 
XV.). 



332 



Conscious Imitation. 



kind of content, remaining relatively constant for all 
instances of that kind of content, give us the recognition- 
coefficient for that class. I recognize a visual picture as 
something I have seen, because it stirs up that a element 
of attention which consists in the motor revivals, reverbera- 
tions, etc., of the eye-brow, frown-muscles, scalp shif tings, 
etc., peculiar to visual attention. Auditory class-recog- 
nition proceeds, similarly, upon revived auditory attention- 
strains, etc. So we have in the a element in the attention 
formula, sufficient explanation of class-recognition, and of 
its position midway between recognition of self and recog- 
nition of single objects, qua single. Of course, as Wundt 
says, just in as far as a single object is recognized as com- 
plex, and by reason of its complexity, just so far it tends 
to become a case of class-recognition ; inasmuch as the 
relationships inside of which its assimilation proceeds are 
common nets for a possibly varied filling. 

The three recognition phenomena, therefore, which my 
scheme sets in order are, self-identity (A), the great 
ground-swell of organic habit, and mental sameness ; class- 
recognition (a), covering the wide objective side, the con- 
tents subject to association or assimilation ; and absolute 
recognition (a), the refined adjustments in which present 
functional elements are paramount. The motor formula 
for attention, then, adds up these three elements, all of 
which are simply facts of attention, giving A + a + a. 

§ 3. Emotion and Sentiment} 

Again, in the affective life we find evidence of the 
working of the imitative principle. Emotion we have 

1 The balance of this chapter, and the next (Chap. XII.), give en resume 
positions which are developed as topics of independent and practical value in 



Emotion and Sentiment. 333 

seen to be, largely, in its qualitative marks, a revival 
product, a clustering, so to speak, of organic and muscular 
reverberations about revived elements of content. So the 
production of emotion depends upon the reinstatement, by- 
association or action, of parts of the ideal copy system 
which it is the function of memory and association to 
build up and to preserve. This follows from what we 
have said in two earlier discussions, that on the nature 
of emotion, and that on the organic basis of memory and 
association. 

There is, however, one class of emotions which show 
more clearly the fact that the framework of ideas to which 
emotion attaches is really a product of imitation ; these 
are the sympathetic emotions. Sympathy may be called 
the imitative emotion par excellence. My child H. cried 
out when I pinched a bottle-cork in her fifth month, and 
wept in her twenty-second week, at the sight of a picture 
of a man sitting weeping, with bowed head in his hands, 
and his feet held fast in stocks. 1 In such cases the pres- 
entation is assimilated to memory copies of personal suffer- 
ing, and so calls out the motor attitudes, i.e., the emotions, 
habitual to experiences of pleasure- or pain-giving objects. 
And the motor discharges, each time that they are re- 
peated, become better denned and more telling upon 
consciousness. 

In many cases, however, I think the associative order 

the later volume of ' Interpretations.' They are given here under the general 
head of imitation, in order to make passibly complete the applications of the 
imitative principle ; in this way also the treatment of the other volume is ren- 
dered somewhat less theoretical. 

1 This is, I own, a remarkably early recognition of a pictorial rendering 
of expression; but I have the date recorded. The picture will be found on 
page 227 of Bissell's Biblical Antiquities. 



334 Conscious Imitation. 

in the sympathetic emotions is the reverse of this. The 
sight of the expression of emotion in another stimulates 
similar attitudes directly in us, and this in turn is felt as 
the state which usually accompanies such a reaction. The 
two cases of sympathy in my child, given above, illustrate 
the truth of both these accounts. 

The sympathetic emotion, in fact, shows the ' circular' 
form of reaction. The motor attitude seen, we may say, is 
itself the copy which tends to bring about its own duplica- 
tion in the person seeing it. And all emotion has the same 
origin as this. The ' expression ' of fear, for example, is a 
reinstatement of motor and organic disturbances which 
were, first of all, utility reactions upon a stimulation. But 
all utility reactions upon a stimulation are simply those 
elements, in a larger diffused ' excess' discharge, which were 
selected just because they were fitted to maintain or avoid, 
as the case may be, a particular kind of stimulation. So 
just in as far as the position is valid that all adapted 
movements are illustrations of the fundamental vital adap- 
tations represented by reaching-out and drawing-in move- 
ments, just so far all the revivals of them, which break 
into consciousness as emotion, are imitative in their origin. 

There are, further, two or three special illustrations of 
this function of imitation in the genesis of emotion so 
clear in the making, in children, that I shall briefly trace 
them. First let us consider the sense of self, with its 
remarkable group of emotions. 

I have described in an earlier place the kind of responses 
which infants make in the presence of persons, and the 
main facts may be here recalled. We have seen that one 
of the most remarkable tendencies of the very young child 



Emotion and Sentiment. 335 

in its responses to its environment is the tendency to 
recognize differences of personality. It responds to what 
I have called ' suggestions of personality.' As early as 
the second month, it distinguishes its mother's or nurse's 
touch in the dark. It learns characteristic methods of 
holding, taking up, patting, kissing, etc., and adapts itself, 
by a marvellous accuracy of protestation or acquiescence, 
to these personal variations. Its associations of person- 
ality come to be of such importance that for a long time 
its happiness or misery depends upon the presence of 
certain kinds of 'personality suggestion.' It is quite a 
different thing from the child's behaviour towards things 
which are not persons. Things get to be, with some few 
exceptions which are involved in the direct gratifica- 
tion of appetite, more and more unimportant ; things get 
subordinated to regular treatment or reaction. But per- 
sons get constantly more important, as uncertain and 
dominating agents of pleasure and pain. The fact of 
movement by persons and its effects on the infant seem 
to be the most important factor in this peculiar influence ; 
later the voice gets to stand for a person's presence, and 
at last the face and its expressions equal the person, in 
all his attributes. 

I think this distinction between persons and things, 
between agencies and objects, is the child's very first step 
toward a sense of the qualities which distinguish persons. 
The sense of uncertainty or lack of confidence grows 
stronger and stronger in its dealings with persons — an 
uncertainty contingent upon the moods, emotions, nuances 
of expression, and shades of treatment, of the persons 
around it. A person stands for a group of experiences 
quite unstable in its prophetic as it is in its historical 



336 Conscious Imitation. 

meaning. This we may, for brevity of expression, as- 
suming it to be first in order of development, call the 
'projective stage' 1 in the growth of the personal con- 
sciousness, which is so important an element in social 
emotion. 

Further observation of children shows that the instru- 
ment of transition from such a 'projective' to a subjective 
sense of personality, is the child's active bodily self, and 
the method of it is the principle of imitation. As a matter 
of fact, accommodation by actual muscular imitation does 
not arise in most children until about the seventh month, 
so utterly organic is the child before this, and so great is 
the impetus of its inherited instincts and tendencies. But 
when the organism is ripe, by reason of cerebral develop- 
ment, for the enlargement of its active range by new 
accommodations, then he begins to be dissatisfied with 
' projects,' with contemplation, and so starts on his career 
of imitation. And of course he imitates persons. Persons 
have become, by all his business with them and theirs 
with him, his interesting objects, the source of his weal 
or woe, his uncertain factors. And further, persons are 
bodies which move. And among these bodies which move, 
which have certain projective attributes, as already de- 
scribed, a very peculiar and interesting one is his own 
body. It has connected with it certain intimate features 
which all others lack. Besides the inspection of hand and 
foot, by touch and sight, he has experiences in his con- 
sciousness which are in all cases connected with this body, 
— strains, stresses, resistances, pains, etc., — an inner felt 

1 See the detailed observations and analysis of these ' personal projects,' 
above, Chap. VI., § 3. The use of the word ' project ' is justified in the earlier 
connection. 



Emotion and Sentiment. 337 

series matching the outer presented series. But it is only 
when a new kind of experience arises which we call effort 

— a set opposition to strain, stress, resistance, pain, an 
experience which arises, I think, first as imitative effort 

— that there comes that great line of cleavage in his 
experience which indicates the rise of volition, and which 
separates off the series now first really subjective. Persist- 
ent imitation with effort is the typical case of explicit voli- 
tion, and the first germinating nucleus of self-hood over 
against object-hood. Situations before accepted simply, 
are now set forward, aimed at, wrought ; and in the fact 
of aiming, working, the fact of agency, which we have 
found to arise from the child's realization of the possible 
capriciousness of character, is the nascent sense of sub- 
ject. 1 

The subject sense, then, is an actuating sense. What 
has formerly been ' projective' now becomes * subjective.' 
The associates of other personal bodies, the attributes 
which made them different from things, are now attached 
to his own body with the further peculiarity of actuation. 
This we may call the subjective stage in the growth of the 
self-notion. It rapidly assimilates to itself all the other 
elements by which the child's own body differs in his 
experience from other active bodies, — the passive inner 
series of pains, pleasures, strains, etc. The self suffers as 
well as acts. All get set over against lifeless things, and 
against living bodies which act, indeed, but whose actions 

1 It is in exhibition of this new sense of agency, or power over its own 
actions, with their suggestiveness to others, that the child's first conscious 
deceptions, ' lies,' appear; and these lies are generally of great value as being 
the means of bringing out, in its earliest forms, the originality and invention 
of the boy or girl. I shall give instances of this with ' Interpretations,' in 
detail, in my proposed volume. 



338 Conscious Imitation. 

do not contribute to his own sense of actuation or of 
suffering. 

Again, it is easy to see what now happens. The child's 
subject sense goes out by a kind of return dialectic, which 
is really simply a second case of assimilation, to illuminate 
these other persons. The project of the earlier period is 
now lighted up, claimed, clothed on with the raiment of 
self -hood, by analogy with the subjective. The projective 
becomes ejective ; that is, other people's bodies, says the 
child to himself, have experiences in them such as mine 
has. They are also mes : let them be assimilated to my 
me copy. This is the third stage; the ejective, or 'social' 
self, is born. 1 

The ego and the alter are thus born together. Both are 
crude and unreflective, largely organic, an aggregate of 
sensations, prime among which are efforts, pushes, strains, 
physical pleasures and pains. And the two get purified 
and clarified together by this twofold reaction between 
project and subject, and between subject and eject. My 
sense of myself grows by imitation of you, and my sense 
of yourself grows in terms of my sense of myself. Both 
ego and alter are thus essentially social ; each is a socius, 
and each is an imitative creation. So for a long time 
the child's sense of self includes too much. The circum- 
ference of the notion is too wide. It includes the infant's 
mother, and little brother, and nurse, in a literal sense ; 
for they are what he thinks of and aims to act like, by 
imitating, when he thinks of himself. To be separated 
from his mother is to lose a part of himself, as much so as 

1 I think an adequate apprehension of the distinctions conveyed by the 
three words ' projective,' ' subjective,' and ' ejective,' would banish the popular 
' psychologists' fallacy ' beyond recall. 



Emotion and Sentiment. 339 

to be separated from a hand or foot. And he is dependent 
for his growth directly upon these suggestions which come 
in for imitation from his personal milieu} 

It will be seen by readers of R. Avenarius, 2 that the two 
stages of this development correspond to the two stages 
in his process of Introjection, whereby the ' hypothetical ' 
(personal-organic) element of the naturlichen Weltbegriff 
is secured. Avenarius finds, from analytical and anthrop- 
ological points of view, a process of ' attribution,' read- 
ing-in (Einlegung), by which a consciousness comes to 
interpret certain peculiarities attaching to those items in 
its experience which represent organisms and afterwards 
persons. The second stage is that whereby these peculi- 
arities get carried back and attached to its own organism 
(Selbsteinlegung), and recognized as 'subjective' (sen- 
sations, perceptions, thoughts), in both organisms, over 
against the regular 'objective' elements contained in the 
rest of the world experience. 

This general doctrine of Avenarius finds better justifica- 
tion than he gives it, I think, from the genetic sphere, into 
which he does not go. The two phenomena, ' personality 
suggestion' and 'imitation,' supply just the support for a 
revised doctrine of 'Introjection.' First comes what I 
have called, in what precedes, the 'projective' stage of the 
self -notion. It is the stage in which the infant gets 'per- 

1 Prof. Josiah Royce has expressed, in an article in the Philosophical 
Review, November, 1 894, a view of the growth of the self-notion in the child's 
consciousness in close agreement, in most points, with this; and I take pleas- 
ure in referring to his development as something similar to that which my 
own detailed statement will be in my later volume. My present text appeared, 
in much the same words as now, in Mind for January, 1894, and was thought 
out some months before I wrote it out, in October, 1893, for that journal. 

2 Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, and also Der menschliche Weltbegriff. 



34-0 Conscious Imitation. 

sonality suggestions.' It is simply the infant's way of 
getting ' more copy ' of a peculiar kind from the personal 
element in its objective surroundings. The second stage 
is secured by imitation. The child reproduces the copy 
thus obtained, consisting of the physical signs and, through 
them, of the mental accompaniments. Here the imitation 
of emotional expressions has its great influence. By this 
reproduction it 'interprets' its projects as subjective in 
itself, and then refers them back to the 'other person' 
again, with all the gain of this interpretation. Avenarius, 
as far as I have been able to discover, has no means of 
passing from the first to the second stage, from project to 
subject. He speaks 1 of a certain confusion ( Verwechselung) 
of the projective experience {T-Erfahrung) with the remain- 
ing personal elements in consciousness (M-Erfahrung) : 
but what the true leading-thread into this ' confusion ' and 
out of it is, he does not note. This is just what I claim it 
is the function of imitation to do ; it supplies the bridge 
with two reaches. It enables me — the child — to pass 
from my experience of what you are, to an interpretation 
of what I am ; and then from this fuller sense of what I 
am, back to a fuller knowledge of what you are. 2 

1 Der tnenschliche Weltbegriff, § 51, p. 30, and § 95, p. 49. 

2 In the use of the two facts, ' personality suggestion ' and ' imitation,' my 
development is quite unindebted to Avenarius, who writes from the point of 
view of race history and criticism. I do not adopt the word ' introjection,' 
since it covers too much. My word 'project' signifies the child's sense of 
others' personality before it has a sense of its own. The rest proceeds by imi- 
tation. This distinction of method raises a further question which, as I have 
already said (Chap. I.), should be carefully discussed in all problems for which 
a genetic solution is sought, i.e. , how far the genetic process itself in the indi- 
vidual's growth has become a matter of race habit or instinct. That is, granted 
a process of origin correctly depicted, to what extent must we say that each 
new individual of the race passes through it in all its details? The origin of 
impulse and instinct illustrate the effects of habit in abbreviating these pro- 



Emotion and Sentiment. 341 

Further, this process of taking in elements from the 
social world by imitation and giving them out again by a 
reverse process of invention (for such the sequel proves 
invention to be : the modified way in which I put things 
together in reading the elements which I get from nature 
and other men, back into nature and other men again) — 
this process never stops. We never outgrow imitation, 
nor our social obligation to it. Our sense of self is con- 
stantly growing richer and fuller as we understand others 
better — as we get into social co-operation with them, — 
and our understanding of them is in turn enriched by the 
additions which our own private experience makes to the 
lessons which we learn from them. These and other 
aspects of social emotion, which come to mind in con- 
nection with this amazingly suggestive topic, must be 
reserved. 1 

I think some light falls on the growth of ethical feeling, 
also, from the psychology of imitation, although I must 
again disclaim adequacy of treatment. The two principles, 
habit and imitative accommodation, seem to get appli- 
cation on this higher plane : the plane which is the theatre 
of the rise of moral sentiment. Moral sentiment arises 
evidently around acts and attitudes of will. It is accord- 
ingly to be expected that the account of the genesis of 
volition will throw some light upon the conditions of the 

cesses and starting the individual from points of higher vantage. I am not 
prepared to say that an isolated child, for example, might not get a high self- 
notion (as he might learn to speak somehow) if deprived of all social sugges- 
tions; but that fact would be subject to explanation as part of the 'learning' 
which is the outcome, on a large scale, of the very genetic process which it 
appears to supersede. 

1 See, however, Chap. XII. In my later work I hope to discuss this; and 
also the higher aspect of ' Recapitulation ' referred to in the preceding note. 



342 Conscious Imitation, 

rise of conscience. So if it be true that present character 
is the deposit of all former reactions of whatever kind, and 
that what we call will is a general term for our concrete 
acts of volition, and further that volition represents a 
co-ordination of tendencies, then according as these ten- 
dencies are suggestions from other persons, on the one 
hand, and represent partial expressions of one's own per- 
sonal character on the other hand, there arises a division 
within that sense of voluntary agency which is the germ of 
the notion of self. Your suggestion to me may conflict 
with my desire ; my desire may conflict with my own pres- 
ent sympathy. Self meets self, so to speak. The self of 
accommodation, imitation, the self that learns, collides with 
the self of habit, of character, the self that seeks to domi- 
nate. It is no longer a matter of simple habit versus sim- 
ple suggestion, as is the case in infancy, before the self 
gets the degree of complexity which constitutes it a vol- 
untary agent, as a later chapter shows. It is now that 
form of habit which is personal agency, coming into con- 
flict with that form of suggestion which is also personal to 
me as representing my social self. Your example is pow- 
erful to me intrinsically ; not because it is abstractly good 
or evil, but because it represents a part of myself, inasmuch 
as I have become what I am in part through my sympathy 
with you and imitation of you. So your injunctions to me 
bring out a difference of motor attitude between what is 
socially responsive in me, in a sense public, and that which 
is relatively me alone, my private self. 

When I come to a new moral situation, therefore, my 
state is this, in each case — and we shall see as we go on 
that it is yet more : I am in a condition of relative equilib- 
rium, or balance of two factors, my personal or habitual 



Emotion and Sentiment. 343 

self, and my social suggestive self. Your wife announces 
to you that you are to go to a reception given by Mr. A. 
' Hang Mr. A. ! ' is your first reply — that of your habitual 
private self. But your wife says, " Some one of the family 
should be there, and besides I want to go." This is an 
appeal to your family, public, social self in its broad sense, 
supplemented by an appeal to your sympathetic, narrower, 
conjugal self. The new decision which you make tends to 
destroy this equilibrium by reinforcing your ' copy ' and 
its influence in your character, on one side or the other, 
and so to lead you out for further habit or for new social 
adaptations. 

And now on this basis comes a new mental movement 
which seems to me to involve a further development of the 
imitative motif — a development which substitutes warmth 
and life for the horrible coldness and death of that view 
which identifies voluntary morality with submission to a 
'word of command.' The child, it is true, very soon 
comes across that most tremendous thing in its moral 
environment which we call authority ; and acquires that 
most magnificent thing in our moral equipment which we 
call obedience. He acquires obedience in one of two ways, 
or both : by suggestion, or by punishment. The way of 
suggestion is the higher way; because it proceeds by 
gradual lessons in accommodation, until the habit of regu- 
larity in conduct is acquired, in opposition to the capricious- 
ness of his own reactions. It is also the better way 
because it sets before the child in an object lesson an 
example of that stability and lawfulness which it is the 
end of all obedience to foster. Yet punishment is good 
and often necessary. Punishment is nature's way ; she 
inflicts the punishment first, and afterwards nurses the 



344 Conscious Imitation. 

insight by which the punishment comes to be understood. 
A child's capricious movement may bring a pain which 
represents all the organic growth of the race ; and so when 
we punish a child's capricious conduct, we are letting fall 
upon him the pain which represents all the social and 
ethical growth of the race. But by whatever method, — 
suggestion or punishment, — the object is the same: to 
preserve the child, until he learns from his own habit the 
insight which is necessary to his own salvation through 
intelligent submission. 

But whether obedience comes by suggestion or by pun- 
ishment, it has this genetic value : it leads to another 
refinement in the sense of self, at first * projective,' then 
subjective. The child finds himself stimulated constantly 
to deny his impulses, his desires, even his irregular sympa- 
thies, by conforming to the will of another. This other 
represents a regular, systematic, unflinching, but reason- 
able personality — still a person, but a very different per- 
son from the child's own. In the analysis of ' personality 
suggestion,' we found this stage of the child's apprehension 
of persons — his sense of the regularity of personal char- 
acter in the midst of the capriciousness that before this 
stood out in contrast to the regularity of mechanical move- 
ment in things. There are extremes of indulgence, the 
child learns, which even the grandmother does not permit ; 
there are extremes of severity from which even the cruel 
father draws back. Here, in this dawning sense of the 
larger limits which set barriers to personal freedom, is 
the ' copy ' forming, which is his personal authority or law. 
It is 'projective,' because he cannot understand it, cannot 
anticipate it, cannot find it in himself. And it is only by 
imitation that he is to reproduce it, and so arrive at a 



Emotion and Sentiment. 345 

knowledge of what he is to understand it to be. So it is a 
' copy for imitation.' It is its aim — so may the child say 
to himself, — and should be mine — if I am awake to it, — 
to have me obey it, act like it, think like it, be like it in 
all respects. It is not I, but I am to become it. Here is 
my ideal self, my final pattern, my ' ought ' set before me. 
My parents and teachers are good because, with all their 
differences from one another, they yet seem to be alike in 
their acquiescence to this law. Only in as far as I get 
into the habit of being and doing like them in reference to 
it, get my character moulded into conformity with it, only 
so far am I good. And so, like all other imitative func- 
tions, it teaches its lesson only by stimulating to action. 
I must succeed in doing — he finds out, as he grows older 
and begins to reflect upon right and wrong, — if I would 
understand. But as I thus progress in doing, I forever 
find new patterns set for me ; and so my ethical insight 
must always find its profoundest expression in that yearn- 
ing which anticipates, but does not overtake, the ideal. 1 

My sense of moral ideal, therefore, is my sense of a 
possible perfect, regular will, taken over in me y in which 
the personal and the social self — my habits and my social 
calls, — are brought completely into harmony; the sense of 
obligation in me, in each case, is a sense of lack of har- 
mony — a sense of the actual discrepancies in my various 
thoughts of self, as my actions and tendencies give rise to 
them. To pursue my commonplace illustration, your wife 
adds to the reasons for your attending the reception of 

1 A further important aid to the child in this development is his observation 
of the way that other people behave to one another in his presence. — On the 
nature of ' ideals ' and the rise of conceptual emotion, in which, in my view, 
the sense of ideals, as being ideal, really consists, see my Handbook of 
Psychology, Vol. II., Chap. IX. 



346 Conscious Imitation. 

Mr. A., this one : 'And besides, you ought to go out more/ 
This is the profoundest reason of all ; not because it has 
in it the word ' ought,' merely, but because it makes appeal 
to the ideal self, before the law of which all the earlier 
claims have their lesser or greater value. 

And then, once more, the thought of this ideal self, 
made ejective, as it must be by the dialectic of this germi- 
nating social sense, put out of and beyond me — this is 
embodied in the moral sanctions of society, and finally 
in God. 1 

The value of the ejective sense of moral self is seen in 
the great sensitiveness we have to the supposed opinions 
of others about our conduct. It is an ingredient of extraor- 
dinary influence. From the account given of the rise of 
the sense of obligation, we should expect the two very 
subtle aspects of this sensitiveness which are actually 
present. First, in general, our dread and fear before 
another's fancied opinion is in direct proportion to our own 
sense of self-condemnation. Consciousness is clear on 
this point. It must be so if it is true that our sense of 
self-condemnation is of social origin, i.e., arises from our 
imitative response to the well-sanctioned opinions and com- 
mands of others. But second, the intelligent observation 

1 I can only mention here Hegel's remarkable treatment of the genetic 
development of the ethical and religious sense (Philosophy of Mind, Sect. II.), 
altogether the best ever written, in my opinion. My facts, as I hope to show 
in another place, give support to Hegel's intuitions. — On the distinctively 
social function of imitation, Tarde and Sighele both dwell in the works 
named, the latter endeavouring to lay the foundations of a science of ' collec- 
tive psychology.' A similar task is set in my later volume. As to religious 
emotion, it is astonishing enough that the law of imitation should reach so far 
as to touch those mysterious ' ideas of reason ' which have so long baffled meta- 
physics. But — why should it not ? Is not the cry 'Anthropomorphism! ' as 
old as Xenophanes? And is it not a plea for or against imitation? 



Emotion and Sentiment. 347 

of the opinions of others, and the suffering of the penal- 
ties of social law, react back constantly to purify and 
elevate the standard which one sets himself, just as they 
originally stimulated its rise. There is, therefore, a con- 
stant progress from the action and reaction of society 
upon the individual and the individual upon society. And 
religious sanctions get much of their force, it seems to me, 
in just this same way. 

Josiah Royce x has distinguished between the two earlier 
phases of self which I have pointed out, but does not 
develop the third. Yet he indicates clearly and with 
emphasis the twofold element of conflict under which the 
moral sense develops. The ordinary accounts on the 
natural history side, from Darwin 2 to the present, simply 
describe a conflict in consciousness between sympathy and 
selfishness. This fails to do justice to the 'law' element, 
which moralists justly emphasize, in the genesis of moral- 
ity. It gives no standard of values, no scale for the esti- 
mation of the worths of the impulses which represent 
temporary and changing selves. I should go farther than 
Royce does in emphasizing this element, believing as I do 
that there is no full sense of oughtness until the child gets 
the basis of a habit, which not only calls upon him to deny 
his private selfishness in favour of sympathy, but also 
his private sympathies in favour of reasonable regularity 
learned through submission. The opposition, that is, be- 
tween my regular personal ideal and all else, — whether it be 
the regularity of my selfish habit or the irregularity of my 
generous responses, — this is the essential condition of the 
rise of obligation. And it is in as far as this ought-feeling 

1 International Journ. of Ethics, July, 1893, P* 43°* 

2 Descent of Man, Part I., Chap. III. 



348 Conscious Imitation. 

t 
goes out beyond the copy elements drawn from actual in- 
stances of action, and anticipates better or more ideal 
action, that the antithesis between the 'ought' and the 
'is' gets psychological justification. 

The question, finally, whether obedience is a case of 
imitation, 1 is a matter of words. It is imitation, in the 
large sense of the term. As far as the copy set in 
the 'word of command' is reproduced, the reaction is imi- 
tative. A child cannot obey a command to do what he 
does not know how to do. The circumstances of his 
doing it, however, the forcible presentation of the copy by 
another person, this seems only to add additional elements 
to the copy itself, not to be in any sense an interference, or 
a prevention of the due operation of imitation. The child 
has in view, when he obeys, not only the thing he is to 
do, but the circumstances — the consequences, the punish- 
ment, the reward — and these also he seeks to reproduce 
or to avoid. On the other hand, it may well be asked 
whether all of our voluntary imitations and actions gen- 
erally, are not, in a sense, cases of obedience ; for it is only 
when an idea gets certain suggestive force, or sanctions, or 
social setting, that it is influential in bringing us out for 
its reproduction. Of course this is only further play on 
definitions ; but it serves to indicate the real elements in 
the situation. When Tonnies says that obedience comes 
first and imitation afterwards, he refers to voluntary imita- 
tion of a particular action which the child has already 
learned to do. But the whole theory of his learning must 
go before, and it could hardly be said that the child learned 
to do a thing at first simply by being commanded to do it. 

1 See discussion by Tarde, loc. cit., and Paulhan, Revue Philosophique, 
August, 1890, p. 179; also Tonnies, Philosophische Monatshefte, 1893, P* 3°8- 



CHAPTER XII. 

Conscious Imitation (concluded). 

§ i. Classification. 

It is possible, on the basis of the preceding develop- 
ments, to lay out a scheme of notions and terms to govern 
the discussion of the whole matter of imitation. This has 
been the 'loose joint' in many discussions; the utter lack 
of any well-defined limits set to the phenomena in ques- 
tion. Tarde practically claims all cases of organic or social 
resemblance as instances of imitation, overlooking the 
truth, as one of his critics takes pains to point out, that 
two things which resemble each other may be common 
effects of the same cause ! Others are disposed to con- 
sider the voluntary imitation of an action as the only 
legitimate case of imitation. This, we have seen, has given 
rise to great confusion among psychologists. We have 
reason to think that volition requires a finely complex 
system of copy elements, whose very presence can be ac- 
counted for only on the basis of earlier organic, or cer- 
tainly ideo-motor, imitations. Further, it is the lower, 
less volitional types of mind that simple imitation char- 
acterizes, the undeveloped child, the parrot, the idiot, the 
hypnotic, the hysterical. If again we say, with yet others, 
that imitation always involves a presentation or image of 
the situation or object imitated, — a position very near the 

349 



350 Conscious Imitation. 

popular use of the term, — then we have great difficulty in 
accounting for the absorption and reproduction of subcon- 
scious, vaguely present stimulations ; as, for example, the 
acquisition of facial expression, the contagion of emotion, 
the growth of style in dress and institutions — what may 
be called the influence of the ' psychic atmosphere.' 

I think we have found reason from the analysis above, 
to hold that our provisional definition of imitation is just; 
an imitative reaction is one which tends normally to main- 
tain or repeat its own stimulating process. This is what 
we find the nervous and muscular mechanism suited to, and 
this is what we find the organism doing in a progressive 
way in all the types of function which we have passed in 
review. If this is too broad a definition, then what I have 
traced must be given some other name, and imitation 
applied to any more restricted function that can be clearly 
and finally marked out. But let us give no rein to the 
fanciful and strained analogies which have exercised the 
minds of some of the French writers on imitation. 

Adhering then to the definition which makes of imita- 
tion an organic type, we may point out its various * kinds,' 
according to the degree in which a reaction of the general 
type has, by complication, abbreviation, substitution, inhi- 
bition, or what not, departed in the development of con- 
sciousness from its typical simplicity. We find, in fact, 
three great instances of function, all of which conform to 
the imitative type. Two of these have already been put 
in evidence in detail ; the third I am going on to charac- 
terize briefly in the following section under the phrase 
' plastic imitation.' 

First : the organic reaction which tends to maintain, 
repeat, reproduce, its own stimulation, be it simple con- 



Classification. 351 

tractility, muscular contraction, or selected reactions which 
have become habitual. This may be called biological or 
organic imitation. Under this head fall all cases lower 
down than the conscious picturing of copies ; lower down 
in the sense of not involving, and never having involved, 
for their execution, a conscious sensory or intellectual sug- 
gesting stimulus, with the possibility of its revival as a 
memory. On the nervous side, such imitations may be 
called subcortical ; and in view of another class mentioned 
below, they may be further qualified as primarily sub- 
cortical. 

These * biological ' imitations are evidently first in order 
of development, and represent the gains or accommoda- 
tions of the organism made independently of the conscious 
reception of stimulations and adaptation to them. They 
serve for the accumulation of material for conscious and 
voluntary actions. In the young of the animals, their scope 
is very limited, because of the complete instinctive equip- 
ment which young animals bring into the world ; but in 
human infants they play an important part, as the means 
of the gradual reduction to order and utility of the dif- 
fused motor discharges of the new-born. I have noted its 
presence under the phrase ' physiological ' suggestion l in 
another place. It is under this head that the so-called 
' selective ' function of the nervous system finds its first 
illustration. 

Second : we pass to psychological, conscious, or cortical 
imitations. The criterion of imitation — the presence of 
a copy to be aimed at — is here fulfilled in the form of 
conscious sensations and images. The copy becomes con- 
sciously available in two ways : first, as sensation, which 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 2. 



352 Conscious Imitation. 

the imitative reaction seeks to continue or reproduce (as 
the imitation of words heard, movements seen, etc.) ; and 
second, as memory. In this latter case there arises com- 
plexity in the 'copy system,' with desire, in which there is 
consciousness of the imitative tendency as respects an 
agreeable memory copy ; and with the persistence of such 
a copy, and its partial repression by other elements of 
memory, comes volition. We find, accordingly, two kinds 
of psychological or cortical imitation, which I have called 
respectively 'simple' and 'persistent' imitation. Simple 
imitation is the sensori-motor or ideo-motor suggestion 
which tends to keep itself going by reinstating its own 
stimulation ; and persistent imitation is the ' try-try- 
again ' experience of early volition, taken up in more de- 
tail below. 1 

Third : a great class of facts which we may well desig- 
nate by the term ' plastic ' or ' secondarily subcortical ' 
imitations, to which more particular attention may now be 
given. 

§ 2. Plastic Imitation. 

This phrase is used to cover all the cases of reaction or 
attitude, toward the doings, customs, opinions of others, 
which once represented more or less conscious adaptations 
either in race or in personal history, but which have be- 
come what is ordinarily called ' secondary automatic ' and 
subconscious. With them are all the less well-defined 
kinds of response which we make to the actions, sugges- 
tions, etc., of others, simply from the habit we are in, by 
heredity and experience, of conforming to social ' copy.' 
Plastic imitation represents the general fact of that normal 

i Cf. Chap. XIII. 



Plastic Imitation, 353 

suggestibility which is, as regards personal rapport, the very 
soul of our social relationships with one another. 

These cases come up for detailed discussion in my 
later volume. They serve to put in evidence the foun- 
dation facts of a possible psychology of masses, crowds, 
organized bodies generally. They may be readily ex- 
plained by one or both of two principles — both really one, 
that of Habit. The principle of 'lapsed links,' already 
explained, applies to cases of conventional conformity, or 
custom, which is but an expression for abbreviated pro- 
cesses of social imitation. This accounts for the influence 
of the old, the venerated, the antique, upon mankind. 
The other principle is the application of habit itself to imi- 
tation, whereby absorption by imitation has become the 
great means, the first resort of consciousness, in the pres- 
ence of new kinds of experience. We have become used 
to getting new accommodations, fine outlets for action and 
avenues of happiness, by taking up new thoughts, beliefs, 
fashions, etc. This accounts for the tyranny of novelty 
in all social affairs. So in these two principles, both exhi- 
bitions of the one law of imitation, we reach the two great 
forces of social life, conservatism and liberalism. So we 
find under this heading such fundamental facts as the 
social phenomena of contagion, fashion, mob-law, which 
Tarde and Sighele so well emphasize, the imitation of 
facial and emotional expression, moral influence, organic 
sympathy, personal rapport, etc., all matters set aside for 
later treatment. The term 'plastic' serves to point out 
the rather helpless condition of the person who imitates, 
and so interprets in his own action the more intangible 
influences of his estate in life. 

The general character of plastic imitation may be made 

2 A 



354 Conscious Imitation. 

clearer if I draw attention to some of its more obscure 
instances, and assign them places in the general scheme of 
development. 

The social instances noticed at length by Tarde, and 
summarized under so-called 'laws,' are easily reduced to 
the more general principles now stated. Tarde enunciated 
a law based on the fact that people imitate one another 
in thoughts and opinions before they do so in dress and 
customs, his inference being that ' imitation proceeds from 
the internal to the external.' As far as this is true it is 
only partially imitation. Thoughts and opinions are imi- 
tated because they are most important and most difficult 
to maintain for oneself. And it is only a result of similar 
thought that action should be similar, without in all cases 
resorting to imitation to account for this last similarity. 
But the so-called facts are not true. The relatively trivial 
and external things are most liable to be seized upon. A 
child imitates persons, and what he copies most largely are 
the personal points of evidence, so to speak ; the boldest, 
most external manifestations, the things that he with his 
capacity is most likely to see, not the inner essential men- 
tal things. It is only as he grows to make a conscious dis- 
tinction between thought and action that he gets to giving 
the former a higher valuation. And so it is in the differ- 
ent strata of society. The relative force of convention, 
slavish imitation, worship of custom, seems to have some 
relation to the degree of development of a people. 

Again, Tarde's laws relative to imitation mode and imita- 
tion coutume — the former having in its eye the new, fash- 
ionable, popular, the fad ; the latter, the old, venerable, 
customary — are so clearly partial statements of the prin- 
ciples of accommodation and habit, as they get application 



Plastic Imitation, 355 

on the broader genetic scale that I have briefly pointed 
out, that it is not necessary to dwell further upon them. 1 

The phenomena of hypnotism illustrate most strikingly 
the reality of this kind of imitation at a certain stage of 
mental life. Delbceuf makes it probable 2 that the charac- 
teristic peculiarities of the ' stages ' of the Paris school are 
due to this influence ; and the wider question may well be 
opened, whether suggestion generally, as understood in 
hypnotic work, might not be better expressed by some 
formula which recognizes the fundamental sameness of all 
reactions — normal, pathological, hypnotic, degenerative 
— which exhibit the form of stimulus-repeating or ' circu- 
lar ' process characteristic of simple imitation. In normal, 
personal, and social suggestion the copy elements are, in 
part, unrecognized ; and their reactions are subject to 
inhibition and blocking-off by the various voluntary and 
complicated tendencies which have the floor. In sleep, 
on the other hand, the copy elements are largely sponta- 
neous images, thrown up by the play of association, or 
stimulated by outside trivialities, and all so weak that 
while action follows in the dream persons, it does not 
generally follow in the dreamer's own muscles. But in 
hypnotic somnambulism, all copy elements are from the 
outside, thrown in ; the inner fountains are blocked ; 
action tends to follow upon idea, whatever it is. Even 
the idea of no action is acted out by the lethargic, and the 
idea of fixed self-sustaining action by the cataleptic. 3 

1 Tarde's other principle, that ' inferiors imitate superiors,' is clearly a 
corollary from the view that the progressive ideal personality arises through 
social suggestion in some such way as we have traced above. 

2 Revue Pkilosophique, XXII., pp. 146 ff. 

3 It may be well to quote Janet's summary of his determinations of the 
characteristic features of general catalepsy, all of which indicate a purely 



356 Conscious Imitation. 

Further, in certain cases of madness (folie a deux, etc.) the 
patient responds to the copy which has been learned from a 
single person only, and has aided perhaps in the production 
of the disease. 1 In all these cases, the peculiar character 
of which is the performance, under conditions commonly 
called those of aboulia, 2 of reactions which require the 
muscular co-ordinations usually employed by voluntary 
action, we have illustrations of ' plastic ' imitation. On 
the pathological side, we find, in aphasic patients who 
cannot write or speak spontaneously, but who still can 
copy handwriting and speak after another, cases which 
illustrate the same kind of defect, yet in which the defect 
is not general, but rather confined to a particular group 
of reactions, by reason of a circumscribed lesion. 

In this form of imitative suggestion, it is now clear, we 
have a second kind of subcortical reaction. It is ' secon- 
darily subcortical,' in contrast with the organic or 'pri- 
marily subcortical ' imitations. When looked at from the 
point of view of race history, it gives us further reason 
for finding imitation a true instinct, a race habit. 3 

imitative condition of consciousness, Aut. Psych., p. 55 : " The different phe-^ 
nomena which we have described are these; i.e., the continuation of an atti- 
tude or a movement, the repetition of movements which have been seen and 
of sounds which have been heard, the harmonious association of the members 
and of their movements." Cf. Janet on hysteria, below, Chap. XIII., § 4, IV. 

1 Cf. Falret, J&tudes cliniques sur les maladies mentales et nerveuses, p. 547. 

2 This would involve, as I have intimated on an earlier page, a doctrine 
which holds that in the hypnotic state, there is inhibition of the cortical asso- 
ciative or synthetic function, but not of the simple cortical sense function. 
Cf. Gurney's remarks on Heidenhain's explanation of ' hypnotic mimicry,' in 
Mind, 1884, p. 493. 

3 In my earlier publication of some of the positions of this chapter {Mind, 
January, 1894, p. 52), I argued against Bain's view, in his Senses and Intellect, 
pp. 413 ff. (3d ed.), of imitation as in all cases acquired. In his fourth 
edition, while repeating his former arguments, he nevertheless so weakens 



How to Observe Children s Imitations. 357 

§ 3. How to Observe Children's Imitations} 

There are one or two considerations of such practical 
importance to all those who wish to observe cases of imi- 
tation by children, that I venture to throw them together, 
only saying by way of introduction that they all follow 
from the general statement that nothing less than the 
child's personality is at stake in the method and matter 
of its imitations ; for the ' self ' is but the form or process 
in which the personal influences surrounding the child 
take on their new individuality. 

1. No observations are of much importance which are 
not accompanied by a detailed statement of the personal 
influences which have affected the child. This is the 
more important since the child sees few persons, and sees 
them constantly. It is not only likely — it is inevitable 
— that he make up his personality -, under limitations of 
heredity, by imitation, out of the ' copy ' set in the actions, 
temper, emotions, of the persons who build around him 
the social enclosure of his childhood. It is only necessary 
to watch a two-year-old closely to see what members of the 
family are giving him his personal * copy ' — to find out 
whether he sees his mother constantly and his father sel- 
dom ; whether he plays much with other children, and 

them by a supplementary note that I find his concessions practically 
bringing him into accord with my own views. The note is as follows {loc. 
cit., p. 441): "As in other connections, I have to qualify the foregoing 
explanation by admitting the possibility and the fact of hereditary transmis- 
sion in at least preparing the way or giving facilities for the operation now 
described. . . . The inheritance of tendencies favouring acquisition may 
decisively contribute to the advancement of our early powers of imitation. 
The term ' instinct ' would thus have a certain fitness. . . ." 

1 See the Century Magazine for December, 1894, and cf. Royce's article 
on ; The Imitative Functions' in the same magazine for May, 1894. 



358 Conscious Imitation. 

what their dispositions are, to a degree ; whether he is 
growing to be a person of subjection, equality, or tyranny ; 
whether he is assimilating the elements of some low unor- 
ganized social content from his foreign nurse. For, in 
Leibnitz's phrase, the boy or girl is a social monad, a little 
world, which reflects the whole system of influences com- 
ing to stir its sensibility. And just in as far as his 
sensibilities are stirred, he imitates, and forms habits of 
imitating ; and habits ? — they are character ! 

2. A point akin to the first is this : every observation 
should describe with great accuracy the child's relation to 
other children. Has he brothers or sisters ; how many of 
each, and of what age ? Does he sleep in the same bed or 
room with them? Do they play much with one another 
alone ? The reason is very evident. An only child has 
only adult ' copy.' He can not interpret his father's actions, 
or his mother's, oftentimes. He imitates very blindly. He 
lacks the more childish example of a brother or sister near 
himself in age. And this difference is of very great 
importance to his development. He lacks the stimulus, 
for example, of games, in which personification is a direct 
tutor to self-hood, as I shall remark further on. And 
while he becomes precocious in some lines of instruc- 
tion, he fails in imagination, in brilliancy of fancy. The 
dramatic, in his sense of social situations, is largely hidden. 
It is a very great mistake to isolate children, especially to 
isolate one or two children. One alone is perhaps the 
worse, but two alone are subject to the other element of 
social danger which I may mention next. 

3. Observers should report with especial care all cases 
of unusually close relationship between children in youth, 
such as childish favoritism, ' platonic friendships,' 'chum- 



How to Observe Children s Imitations, 359 

ming,' in school or home, etc. We have in these facts — 
and there is a very great variety of them — an exaggera- 
tion of the social or imitative tendency, a narrowing down 
of the personal suggestive sensibility to a peculiar line of 
well-formed influences. It has never been studied by writers 
either on the genesis of social emotion or on the practice of 
education. To be sure, teachers are alive to the pros and 
cons of allowing children and students to room together ; 
but it is with a view to the possibility of direct immoral 
or unwholesome contagion. This danger is certainly real ; 
but we, as psychological observers, and above all as teachers 
and leaders, of our children, must go even deeper than 
that. Consider, for example, the possible influence of a 
school chum and room-mate upon a girl in her teens ; for 
this is only an evident case of what all isolated children 
are subject to. A sensitive nature, a girl whose very life 
is a branch of a social tree, is placed in a new environ- 
ment, to engraft upon the members of her mutilated self 
— her very personality ; it is nothing less than that — 
utterly new channels of supply. The only safety possible, 
the only way to conserve the lessons of her past, apart 
from the veriest chance, and to add to the structure of 
her present character, lies in securing for her the greatest 
possible variety of social influences. Instead of this, she 
meets, eats, walks, talks, lies down at night, and rises in 
the morning, with one other person, a 'copy ' set before her, 
as immature in all likelihood as herself, or, if not so, yet a 
single personality, put there to wrap around her growing 
self the confining cords of unassimilated and foreign habit. 
Above all things, fathers, mothers, teachers, elders, give 
the children room ! They need all that they can get, and 
their personalities will grow to fill it. Give them plenty 



360 Conscious Imitation, 

of companions, fill their lives with variety, — variety is the 
soul of originality, and its only source of supply. The 
ethical life itself, the boy's, the girl's, conscience, is born 
in the stress of the conflicts of suggestion, born right out of 
his imitative hesitations; and just this is the analogy which 
he must assimilate and depend upon in his own conflicts 
for self-control and social continence. So impressively 
true is this from the human point of view, that in my 
opinion — formed, it is true, from the very few data acces- 
sible on such points, still a positive opinion — children 
should never be allowed, after infancy, to room regularly 
together; special friendships of a close exclusive kind 
should be discouraged or broken up, except when under 
the immediate eye of the wise parent or guardian ; and 
even when allowed, these relationships should, in all cases, 
be used to entrain the sympathetic and moral sentiments 
into a wider field of social exercise. 

4. The remainder of this section must be devoted to 
the further emphasis of the need of close observation of 
children's games, especially those which may be best 
described as 'society games.' All those who have given 
even casual observation to the doings of the nursery have 
been impressed with the extraordinary fertility of the child 
mind, from the second year onward, in imagining and plot- 
ting social and dramatic situations. It has not been as 
evident, however, to these casual observers, nor to many 
really more skilled, that they were observing in these 
fancy-plays the putting together anew of fragments, or 
larger pieces, of their own mental history. But here, in 
these games, we see the actual use which our children 
make of the personal ' copy ' material which they have got 
from you and me. If a man study these games patiently 



How to Observe Children s Imitations. 361 

in his own children, and analyze them out, he gradually 
sees emerge from the child's inner consciousness its pict- 
ure of the boy's own father, whom he aspires to be like, 
and whose actions he seeks to generalize and apply anew. 
The picture is poor, for the child takes only what he is 
sensible to. And it does seem often, as Sighele patheti- 
cally notices on a large social scale, and as the Westminster 
divines have urged without due sense of the pathetic and 
home-coming point of it, that he takes more of the bad in 
us for reproduction than of the good. But be this as it 
may, what we give him is all he gets. Heredity does not 
stop with birth ; it is then only beginning. And the pity 
of it is that this element of heredity, this reproduction of 
the fathers in the children, which might be used to redeem 
the new-forming personality from the heritage of past com- 
monness or impurity, is simply left to take its course for 
the further establishing and confirmation of it. Was there 
ever a group of school children who did not leave the real 
school to make a play school, erecting a throne for one of 
their number to sit on and 'take off' the teacher? Was 
there ever a child who did not play ' church,' and force her 
father if possible into the pulpit ? Were there ever chil- 
dren who did not ' buy ' things from fancied stalls in every 
corner of the nursery, when they had once seen an elder 
drive a trade in the market ? The point is this : the child's 
personality grows ; growth is always by action ; he clothes 
upon himself the scenes of his life and acts them out ; so 
he grows in what he is, what he understands, and what he 
is able to perform. 

In order to be of direct service to observers of games 
of this character, I shall now give a short account of an 
observation of the kind made a few weeks ago — one of 



362 Conscious Imitation. 

the simplest of many actual situations which my two little 
girls, Helen and Elizabeth, have acted out together. It is 
a very commonplace case, a game, the elements of which 
are evident in their origin ; but I choose this rather 
than one more complex, since observers are usually not 
psychologists, and they find the elementary the more 
instructive. 

On May 2, I was sitting on the porch alone with the 
children — the two mentioned above, aged respectively 
four and a half and two and a half years. Helen, the 
elder, told Elizabeth that she was her little baby; that 
is, Helen became 'mama,' and Elizabeth 'baby.' The 
younger responded by calling her sister ' mama,' and the 
play began. 

" You have been asleep, baby. Now it is time to get 
up," said mama. Baby rose from the floor, — first falling 
down in order to rise, — was seized upon by 'mama,' 
taken to the railing to an imaginary wash-stand, and her 
face washed by rubbing. Her articles of clothing were 
then named in imagination, and put on, one by one, in 
the most detailed and interesting fashion. During all this 
' mama ' kept up a stream of baby talk to her infant : 
" Now your stockings, my darling ; now your skirt, sweet- 
ness — or, no — not yet — your shoes first," etc., etc. 
Baby acceded to all the details with more than the docility 
which real infants usually show. When this was done, 
" Now we must go tell papa good-morning, dearie," said 
mama. " Yes, mama," came the reply ; and hand in hand 
they started to find papa. I, the spectator, carefully read 
my newspaper, thinking, however, that the reality of papa, 
seeing that he was so much in evidence, would break in 
upon the imagined situation. But not so. Mama led her 



How to Observe Children s Imitations. 363 

baby directly past me to the end of the piazza, to a col- 
umn in the corner. " There's papa," said mama; "now 
tell him good-morning." — "Good-morning, papa; I am 
very well," said baby, bowing low to the column. "That's 
good," said mama, in & gruff , low voice> which caused in the 
real papa a thrill of amused self -consciousness most difficult 
to contain. "Now you must have your breakfast," said 
mama. The seat of a chair was made a breakfast-table, 
the baby's feigned bib put on, and her porridge carefully 
administered, with all the manner of the nurse who usu- 
ally directs their breakfast. "Now" (after the meal, which 
suddenly became dinner instead of breakfast), "you must 
take your nap," said mama. " No, mama ; I don't want 
to," said baby. "But you must." — "No; you be baby, 
and take the nap." — "But all the other children have 
gone to sleep, dearest, and the doctor says you must" said 
mama. This convinced baby, and she lay down on the 
floor. "But I haven't undressed you." So then came all 
the detail of undressing ; and mama carefully covered her 
up on the floor with a light shawl, saying, " Spring is com- 
ing now ; that'll be enough. Now shut your eyes, and go 
to sleep." — " But you haven't kissed me, mama," said the 
little one. "Oh, of course, my darling!" — so a long 
siege of kissing ! Then baby closed her eyes very tight, 
while mama went on tiptoe away to the end of the porch. 
"Don't go away, mama," said baby. "No; mama wouldn't 
leave her darling," came the reply. 

So this went on. The nap over, a walk was proposed, 
hats put on, etc., the mama exercising great care and 
solicitude for her baby. One further incident to show 
this: when the baby's hat was put on — the real hat — 
mama tied the strings rather tight. " Oh ! you hurt, 



364 Conscious Imitation. 

mama," said baby. "No; mama wouldn't draw the strings 
too tight. Let mama kiss it. There, is that better, my 
darling?" — all comically true to a certain sweet maternal 
tenderness which I had no difficulty in tracing. 

Now in such a case, what is to be reported, of course, is 
the facts. Yet knowledge of more than the facts is neces- 
sary, as I have said above, in order to get the full psy- 
chological lesson. We need just the information which 
concerns the rest of the family, and the social influences 
of the children's lives. I recognized at once every phrase 
which the children used in this play, where they got it, 
what it meant in its original context, and how far its mean- 
ing had been modified in this process which I have called 
'social heredity.' But as that story is reported to strangers 
who have no knowledge of the children's social antecedents, 
how much beyond the mere facts of imitation and personi- 
fication do they get from it ? And how much the more is 
this true when we examine those complex games of the 
nursery which show the brilliant fancy for situation and 
drama of the wide-awake four-year-old ? 

Yet we psychologists are free to interpret ; and how 
rich the lessons even from such a simple scene as this ! 
As for Helen, what could be a more direct lesson — a lived- 
out exercise in sympathy, in altruistic self-denial, in the 
healthy elevation of her sense of self to the dignity of 
kindly offices, in the sense of responsibility and agency, 
in the stimulus to original effort and the designing of 
means to ends — and all of it with the best sense of the 
objectivity which is quite lost in wretched self-conscious- 
ness in us adults, when we personate other characters? 
What could further all this highest mental growth better 
than the game by which the lessons of her mother's daily 



How to Observe Children s Imitations. 365 

life are read into the child's little self ? And then, in the 
case of Elizabeth, certain things appear. She obeys with- 
out command or sanction, she takes in from her sister the 
elements of personal suggestion in their simpler childish 
forms ; and certainly such scenes, repeated every day with 
such variation of detail, must give something of the sense 
of variety and social equality which real life afterwards 
confirms and proceeds upon ; and lessons of the opposite 
character are learned by the same process. 

And all this exercise of fancy must strengthen the 
imaginative faculty. The prolonged situations, maintained 
sometimes whole days, or possibly weeks, give strength to 
the imagination and train the attention. And I think, 
also, that the sense of essential reality, and its distinction 
from the unreal, the merely imagined, is helped by this 
sort of symbolic representation. But it has its dangers 
also — very serious ones. And possibly the best service 
of observation just now is to gather the facts with a view 
to the proper recognition and avoidance of the dangers. 

Finally, I may be allowed a word to interested par- 
ents. You can be of no use whatever to psychologists 
— to say nothing of the actual damage you may be to 
the children — unless you know your babies through and 
through. Especially the fathers ! They are willing to 
study everything else. They know every corner of the 
house familiarly, and what is done in it except the nursery. 
A man labours for his children ten hours a day, gets his 
life insured for their support after his death, and yet he 
lets their mental growth, the formation of their characters, 
the evolution of their personality, go on by absorption — if 
no worse — from common, vulgar, imported and changing, 
often immoral, attendants ! Plato said the state should train 



366 Conscious Imitation. 

the children ; and added that the wisest man should rule 
the state. This is to say that the wisest man should tend 
his children ! Hugo gives us, in Jean Valjean and Cosette, 
a picture of the true paternal relationship. We hear a 
certain group of studies called the humanities, and it is 
right. But the best school in the humanities for every 
man is in his own house. 1 

1 I venture to insert this more popular section for homiletic purposes. It 
may serve for some readers to relieve the monotony of the theoretical chapters. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The Origin of Volition. 

§ I. Description and Analysis of Volition. 

In earlier chapters I have endeavoured to trace the 
development of some aspects of the child's active life up 
to the rise of volition. The transition from the involun- 
tary class of muscular reactions to which the general word 
' suggestion ' applies, to the performance of actions fore- 
seen and intended occurs, as I have before intimated, 
through the persistence and repetition of imitative sug- 
gestions. The distinction between simple imitation and 
persistent imitation has been made and illustrated in an 
earlier place. 1 Now, in saying that volition — the clearly 
conscious phenomenon of will — arises historically on the 
basis of persistent imitation, what I mean is this : that 
the normal child's first exhibition of volition is found in 
its repeated efforts to imitate something ; and what it imi- 
tates, its ' copy] is of two great kinds : (i) something external, 
such as movements seen and noises heard ; and (2) some- 
thing internal, arising in its own memory, imagination, or 
thought. I shall consider, first, the rise of volition by 
imitation of external copies, — since this comes first in 
natural history, or phylogenesis, — and then consider the 
modifications which are necessary when we come to con- 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 4. 
367 



368 The Origin of Volition. 

sider memory and imagination as setting copies for imita- 
tion to the individual child. 

An adequate analysis of will, with reference to the fiat 
of volition, reveals three great factors for which a theory of 
the origin of this function should provide. These three 
elements of the voluntary process are desire, deliberation, 
and effort. Desire is distinguished from impulse by its 
intellectual quality, i.e. y by the fact that it always has 
reference to a presentation or pictured object. This dis- 
tinguishes desire from that formidable and refractory 
thing which is called 'restlessness.' Organic impulses may 
pass into desires, when their objects become conscious. 
Further, desire implies lack of satisfaction of the impulse 
on which it rests — a degree of inhibition, thwarting, un- 
fulfilment. Put more generally, these two characteristics 
of desire are : (i) a pictured object suggesting associated 
experiences which it does not suffice to realize, and (2) an 
incipient motor reaction which the imaged object stimu- 
lates but does not discharge. 1 Analysis shows, I think, 
that these two points are equally important, because correl- 
ative. Without associated experiences, the object would 
simply give rise to simple ideo-motor suggestion, as in the 
cases already cited, and in hypnotic suggestion ; but these 
associated experiences lack body, satisfying quality, the 
'reality coefficient. ' In Pauline phrase, 'What a man hath, 
why doth he yet hope for?' But the mere picturing of 
objects with their associates, of whatever kind, does not 
constitute desire. Desire is a tendency-state, an incipient 
action, a condition of high potential, which, however, does 
not discharge itself. For example, — to take an illus- 

1 See my Handbook of Psychology, II., Chap. XIV., § 2 (pp. 324 ff.), for the 
general analysis of desire. 



Description and Analysis of Volition. 369 

tration from our main subj ect, the infant, — the child 
continues to cry for an apple which his nurse refuses to 
give him ; the nurse's prohibition has not the requisite 
inhibitive force to obliterate the motor tensions aroused 
by the pictured fruit and its associated pleasures. But 
the child's father comes into the room, and says, ' No ! ' 
Forthwith the child gives it up, satisfies himself with 
other objects, and no longer shows the motor tendencies 
and expressions which indicate desire. Yet in this latter 
case, the object-picture and its suggested pleasures are 
still present just the same. Real desire is gone, I think, 
as completely as in the hypnotic trance, when a new 
command turns the patient's motor responses into new 
channels. I do not desire the millions of my neighbour, 
nor a seat in the House of Lords ; my sense that such 
things are unattainable inhibits all active attitude. But, 
for the opposite reason, I do desire an increase in my 
salary, and a seat on the bench where competent psychol- 
ogists hold counsel together. 

These prerequisites of desire allowed, it becomes rela- 
tively easy to fix the rise of the phenomenon in the in- 
fant's growth. Evidently, memory must be well developed, 
and the clear defining of a mental picture, that it may be an 
appropriate nucleus to a particular desire. This defining, 
it is further evident, must be sought, first, in connection 
with the senses whose so-called ' presentative ' element is 
earliest and most pronounced. Sight and sound memories 
fulfil this requirement first ; they are most clear-cut and 
uncomplicated with other sense pictures. Further, mus- 
cular memories are among the earliest with which they 
become associated, some such connections being guaran- 
teed by heredity. And the necessary associations of 

2 B 



370 The Origin of Volition. 

pleasure, which powerfully impel to desire, are pungent 
and strong in the case of muscular sensations. 

I think it is in connection with sight and hearing 
memories of pleasant experiences, accordingly, as they 
are associated with pleasurable or not very painful move- 
ments, that desire is to be first looked for normally. Of 
auditory memories, the voice of mother or nurse, and 
sounds associated with the preparation of food, etc., be- 
come evident stimulations to lively anticipatory reactions 
which express desire. On the side of vision, again, similar 
indications are abundant, and extend back yet earlier in 
the infant's mental history. 

The theory which connects desire fundamentally with 
appetite and thirst for pleasure can be defended, I think, 
only when supplemented from the side of simple ideo-motor 
suggestion. It is clear that appetite is at first organic, 
purely affective; it has no objective terminus. 1 And it is 
only as appetites get tied to some well-defined visual or 
auditory memory picture, that the unrest of hunger and 
thirst becomes the desire for food and drink. But all 
desires are not thus founded in appetite, nor aimed at 
pleasure. 2 It is only going a step farther, therefore, in 
the recognition of the essentials of the state called desire 
in normal and typical cases, to say, as I have said else- 
where, 3 that " desire takes its rise in visual (or auditory) 
suggestion, and develops under its lead." 

As a matter of fact, it seems to me to be extremely 
likely that the first cases of real desire in the infant's con- 

1 The cries and other movements which are associated with appetite are 
largely organic pain reflexes. 

2 See above, Chap. VI., § 4, and Handbook, II., pp. 323 ff. 

3 Handbook, II., p. 324. 



Description and Analysis of Volition, 371 

sciousness find their expression in the movements of its 
hands toward or from objects which it sees. We have 
seen that hand-movements are the natural outlets for clear 
differences in consciousness. As soon as there is clear 
visual presentation of objects we find impulsive muscular 
reactions directed toward them, at first in an excessively 
crude fashion, but becoming rapidly refined. These move- 
ments are free and uninhibited — simple sensori-motor 
suggestive reactions. But we have seen, in the experi- 
ments described above, that the vain grasping at distant 
objects, which prevailed up to about the sixth month, 
tended to disappear rapidly in the two subsequent months 
— just about the time of the rise of imitation. During 
the eighth month, my child, H., would not grasp at highly- 
coloured objects more than sixteen inches distant, her 
reaching distance being ten to twelve inches. This train- 
ing of impulse is evidently an association of muscular 
sensations from the arm with visual experiences of dis- 
tance. The suggested reaction becomes inhibited in a 
growing degree by counteracting nervous processes which 
probably began their influence much earlier. Here are the 
conditions necessary to the rise of desire. It is a typical 
instance, at any rate, whether or not it be, 1 as I think, the 
first instance, of the full fact of desire. 

1 Of course, like all other dividing lines in consciousness, such a line of 
division is not well marked. It is impossible to say just how far the dumb, 
unpictured, organic ends in cases of appetite, unrest, muscular discomfort, etc., 
must crystallize into outline and objective reference to be no longer impulse, 
but desire. The needs of our terminology rather than the mental facts them- 
selves lead to such divisions. I also must disclaim having said — what I have 
been quoted as saying, in the passage of my Handbook referred to — that a 
blind and deaf child would never have desire ! Sight and sound act first 
only because and when they are first as memory objects ; if they are absent, 
then less clear mental pictures get to be desired, of course. 



372 The Origin of Volition. 

The further requisite to volition, as analysis gives it, 
is 'deliberation.' The phenomenon called 'deliberative 
suggestion ' has already been described and illustrated 
from child-life. 1 The line of cleavage between such sug- 
gestion and the deliberation of volition lies, I think, just 
where that between impulse and desire lies. The charac- 
teristic thing about desire is the advanced representative 
process it involves — the third-level process on the brain 
side — with the complex sensori-motor system which is 
the basis of various inhibitions. So in deliberation, the 
complexity actually present in deliberative suggestion 
passes up to a higher level. The elements of it become 
clearly pictured, co-ordinated in the attention, and esti- 
mated, as to relative suitableness for execution. It is a 
vivid, clear thing in consciousness, this deliberation, both 
as to the elements of representation and as to the motor 
tendencies which they represent. On the contrary, the 
child's mind, in ' deliberative suggestion,' is analogous to 
the state of conflicting impulse, motor jerkiness, unreason- 
able caprice, seen also in certain pathological subjects, 
who are victims of aboulia in any of its forms. The essen- 
tial difference — and it is essential, I think, functionally 
considered — is that the deliberation of volition involves 
attention at its normal gait, and the motor co-ordina- 
tions which are characteristic of it and of its seat among 
the highest brain relationships. Now the resolution of 
this conscious complexity of motives, as found in delib- 
eration, is another and the culminating characteristic of 
volition. 

Effort, in all its forms, from simple consent, accept- 
ance, ratification, of an action as good or as real, to the 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 3. 



Rise of Volition in the Child. 373 

violent exertion of despair, or passion, — effort arises just 
after deliberation, and puts an end to it. We need not 
go into the vexed question of the meaning of effort, its 
basis, etc. ; all we need here is its natural history. And 
everybody will admit that it puts an end to mental hesita- 
tion and deliberation, it settles things as far as one's atti- 
tude is concerned, and issues in action as far as inhibiting 
conditions will permit. The sense of effort, then, seems 
to accompany, or indeed to be, the passage of conscious- 
ness into a state of motor monoideism, or strong attention, 
after the perplexities of deliberation. It arises just when 
an end is put to motor plurality by synthesis or co- 
ordination. 1 

§ 2. The Typical Case of the Rise of Volition in the 

Child. 

These three characters of volition — desire, attentive 
deliberation, effort — find their typical fulfilment, I think, 
in the *' try-try-again ' experience of infants ; and the evident 
case of this, seen in the persistent imitation of sounds 
heard and movements seen, the * external copies ' spoken of 
above, may be now considered. 

We have seen that sight and hearing, in direct association 
with muscular sensation, supply the materials for reproduc- 
tion largely at this early period ; and it has now been urged 
that we are to look to imitation, considered as a type of 
reaction, as the principal method of adjustment of the 
organism to its surroundings. Independently, however, of 
this last presumption — indeed, in my own mental progress 
it was the facts of early volition that led me to the broader 

1 Cf. the full treatment of the appropriate chapters of my Handbook of 
Psychology, Vol. II., especially Chap. XV., § i, and Chap. XVI., § I. 



374 The Origin of Volition. 

view of imitation in mental development — the direct 
evidence on the point is quite convincing. 

Persistent Imitation and Volition. — In persistent imita- 
tion we have an advance on simple imitation in two ways : 
(i) A comparison of the first result produced by the child 
(movement, sound) with the suggesting image or 'copy' 
imitated. This is nascent deliberation. For, when the 
dynamogenic influences of these presentations are taken 
into account, we find a conflict on the motor side. The 
old hand-movement, let us say, associated with the ' copy,' 
as it has been established by simple imitation, instinct, or 
impulse, does not adequately represent the influence now 
exerted by the ' copy,' plus that of the new optical picture 
created by the reaction itself. The dynamogenic condition 
is now complex. This gives rise to the state of dissatisfac- 
tion, motor restlessness, which is desire, best described in 
this connection by the phrase ' will-stimulus ' ; (2) the out- 
burst of this complex motor condition in a new reaction, 
accompanied in consciousness by the attainment of a 
monoideistic state — the ' end in view ' — and the feeling 
of effort. Here, then, in persistent imitation we have, 
thus briefly put, the necessary elements of the voluntary 
psychosis for the first time clearly present. 

The reason that in imitation the material for volition 
is found is seen to be that here the 'circular process/ 
already described, maintains itself in a conscious way 
through the picturing of sights, sounds, etc. In reactions 
which are not consciously imitative, for example an ordi- 
nary pain-movement reaction, this circular process, whereby 
the result of the first movement becomes itself a stimulus 
to the second, etc., is not brought about ; or, if it do arise, 
it consists simply in a repetition of the same motor event 



Rise of Volition in the Child. 375 

fixed by association — as the repetition of the ma sound 
so common with very young infants. Consciousness re- 
mains monoideistic. But in persistent imitation, the reac- 
tion performed comes in by eye or ear as a new and 
different stimulus ; here is the state of motor polyideism 
necessary for the supervention of the feeling of effort. 
The motor process must be reduced by co-ordination to a 
reaction which will reproduce the copy, and at the same 
time employ, with least modification, the channels of dis- 

/I 



mt 
Fig. XIII. — Simple Imitation, v, v' = Visual Seat; mp= Motor Seat; 
mt = Muscle moved; mc = Muscle-sense Seat ; A = ' Copy ' imitated ; 
B = Imitation made. The two Processes v and v flow together 
in the Old Channel v, mp, fixed by Association, and the Reac- 
tion is repeated without Change or Effort. 

charge already fixed by the association between presentation 
and movement. 

From this and the other lines of evidence given below, 
we are able to see more clearly the conditions under which 
effort arises. It seems clear that (1) the muscular sen- 
sations arising from a suggestive reaction do not present 
all the conditions; in young children, just as in habitual 
adult performances, muscular sensations simply tend to give 
a repetition of the muscular event by strict association, 



376 The Origin of Volition. 

without any new attentive co-ordination at all. There is 
no new adaptation, and so no effort. The kinesthetic 
centre empties into a lower motor centre in some such 
way as that described by James, 1 along the diagonal line 
mc y mp in the ' motor square ' diagram given above (Fig. 
XIII.). This is also true when (2) sensations of the ' re- 
mote ' kinesthetic order, the sight or hearing of movements 
made, are added to the muscular sensations. They may 
all coalesce to produce again a repetition of the original 
reaction. The ' remote ' and * immediate ' sources of motor 
stimulation reinforce each other. This is seen in a child's 
satisfied repetition of its own mistakes in speaking and 
drawing, although it hears and sees its own performances. 
Consequently (3) there is muscular effort only when the 
' copy ' persists and is compared with the result of the first 
reaction ; that is, on the mental side, when the two presen- 
tations are held together in the attention, so that together 
they represent one intended movement or mental end ; and 
on the physical side, when the two processes, started respec- 
tively by the ' copy ' and the reactive result, are co-ordinated 
together in a common motor discharge (cc, mp f in Fig. 
XIV.). The stimulus to repeated effort arises from the 
lack of this co-ordination or identity in the motor influences 
of the different stimulations which reach a possible centre 
of co-ordination simultaneously ; or if we consider such 
co-ordination only functionally — instead of making it a 
matter of a separate local seat — this will-stimulus repre- 
sents the degree of difficulty these stimulations have in 
getting thus united in a common motor function. 2 The 

1 Princ. of Psychology, II., p. 582. 

2 This does not necessarily imply a central vs. peripheral theory of the sense 
of effort; for the 'relative difficulty' spoken of in effecting the co-ordination 
in the attention may itself represent peripheral elements which inhibit the 



Rise of Volition in the Child. 



377 



mental outcome, effort, accompanies the gathering of these 
combined influences, and, as soon as this outburst repro- 
duces the 'copy,' the effort is said to 'succeed,' the subject 
is satisfied, 'will-stimulus ' disappears, and the reaction tends 
to become simple as habit. 




Fig. XIV. — Persistent Imitation with Effort. C = Successful Imita- 
tion ; cc = Co-ordinating Centre, either Local or Purely Func- 
tional. Other Letters same as in Fig. XI II., with the added 
Circuit cc, mp', mt', mc'. The Processes at v and v' do not flow 
together in the Old Channel v, mp, but are co-ordinated at cc 
in a New Reaction mp', mt', which includes all the Elements of 
the 'Copy' (A) and more. The Useless Elements then fall 

AWAY BECAUSE THEY ARE USELESS AND THE SUCCESSFUL EFFORT IS 
ESTABLISHED. 



Physiologically the point which distinguishes persistent 
imitation with effort from simple imitation with repetition 
is this co-ordination of processes in the centre. In simple 
imitation the excitement aroused by the reaction, as its 
result is reported inwards by the eye or ear, finds no 
outlet except that already utilized in the earlier sugges- 

attention, or lack of the necessary peripheral elements to stimulate the atten- 
tion, or the very feeling of effort may be really sensations from the muscles 
which are used in the act of attention. See Chap. XV., §§ I ff. 



378 The Origin of Volition, 

tive reactions. Hence it passes off in the way of a repe- 
tition of the earlier discharge, which represents inherited 
tendency, reflex movement, accidental association, pleasure- 
pain acquisition, or what not. All this is an affair of the 
'second level,' of suggestion, of reactive consciousness. 
The child repeats its prattle over and over, as it lies abed 
in the early morning, simply from vigour, not from desire, 
nor from effort, least of all with deliberation. The sounds 
he makes are accompanied by sensations in his vocal 
organs, and what he hears he makes again, and so on, 
simply because his machinery works that way — works 
easily and gives him the pleasure of exercise and rhythm. 
But persistent imitation — how different ! The same 
reaction is not repeated. He is no longer delighted 
with his circular activity. He detects differences between 
what he sees or hears and what he produces by hand or 
tongue, 1 and finds these differences unpleasant to him. 
Then he makes effort to reduce the difference by alter- 
ing his movements, and what is most remarkable, he 
succeeds in doing so. How he does this — how he brings 
about a change in his reactions, from senseless repetition 
to intelligent conformity to the copy which he imitates — 
that is the question of adaptation; 2 but he does it, and the 
least that this can mean is that there is in some way a 

1 " It seems just to say," remarks Janet (Autom. Psych., p. 475), "that 
voluntary effort consists in the systematization of images and memories 
which are accustomed to express themselves one at a time automatically"; 
and (p. 474), "the patient copies the movement of my arm automatically, 
while I copy a drawing voluntarily ; the reason of it is that the patient acts 
only because he has an image of the action, and he carries it out without pass- 
ing judgment upon it [simple imitative suggestion], while I copy the drawing, 
perceiving the resemblance, and because I perceive it " [persistent imitation, 
or volition] . Compare his context. 

2 See above, Chap. VII., §§ 1, 2. 



Rise of Volition in the Child. 379 

modification of the impelling influence of his old associa- 
tions. 

What happens is an ' effort/ and by this effort the two 
stimulations, the original 'copy' and his own reproduction 
of it, are combined in one motor response. The two 
centres, or partial centres, stimulated by the original 
copy, on one hand, and by the reaction as it is seen or 
heard, on the other hand, get combined in a common 
action, whose outcome is not carried off entirely by the old 
associated channel of discharge, but finds in part new ad- 
jacent channel ; and so the external reaction becomes 
different and more adequate, only to be reported in again 
by eye or ear, and so by co-ordination to produce again a 
new effort, etc. 

The foregoing development uses the term 'co-ordina- 
tion ' with a twofold application : first, it is applied to the 
physical process in the brain, whereby, as we may suppose, 
different areas of stimulation are brought together for 
a united function in a very complex way. It involves 
at once greater complexity and larger unity. It is the 
type of function characteristic of the highest level, the 
cortex. The lower reactions, the reflexes, suggestive 
responses, etc., are each, when taken alone, independent 
in great measure ; each acts for itself on its own stimulus. 
But cortical processes are not so. While they are more 
varied, they are also more unstable and more intercon- 
nected. They coalesce in a single function which does 
not show its enormous complexity on its face. For exam- 
ple, speech involves five or six well-localized areas co-ordi- 
nated in a common discharge, and it is rare that one is 
injured without injuring the common function which draws 
support from each. 



380 The Origin of Volition. 

On the mental side we find co-ordination also, and it is 
always a process which takes attention in the learning 
and, until it becomes fixed by habit, in the execution also, 
invariably. Every original co-ordination of stimulations 
involving desire, deliberation, effort, is an act of attention. 
This, of course, cannot be a mere incidental or unessential 
fact. All that we know of attention shows it to be too 
central a thing for that. It remains, therefore, among 
the problems yet to be answered, what attention is, how 
its rise takes place, and what its presence means in the 
beginning of voluntary movement. 1 Here I may only add 
that the function of consciousness, in this act of persistent 
imitation, seems to be exhausted in the fact of close atten- 
tion to the 'copy/ The infant does not attend to his 
movements, 2 nor does he shift his attention from his copy 
to his own imitation, except between his efforts. On the 
contrary, in visual imitation, for example, he keeps his eye 
fixed on the movement, the tracing, or the action of the 
person whom he is imitating ; and his success in the effort 
seems to depend upon the degree in which he is able to 
hold this copy series up steady and unchanged before him. 
How it comes that during this concentration upon the 
copy, and by reason of it, the muscular actions are con- 
forming themselves more and more to its exact reproduc- 
tion — this has been the topic of the earlier chapter on 
Adaptation. 

The complex ' copy ' of persistent imitation is necessary, 
therefore, as a stimulus to the tentative voluntary use of 
the muscles. The theory that all voluntary movements are 
led up to by spontaneous reactions which result in pleas- 

1 See below, Chap. XV. 

2 So we have seen in connection with ' tracery-imitation,' above, p. 87. 



Rise of Volition in the Child. 381 

ure or pain, and then get repeated only because of their 
hedonio result, will not hold water for an instant in the 
presence of the phenomena of imitation. Suppose H. 
endeavouring in the crudest fashion to put a rubber on the 
end of a pencil, after seeing me do it, — one of her earliest 
imitations. What a chaos of ineffective movements ! But 
after repeated efforts she gets nearer and nearer it, till at 
last, with daily object-lessons from me, she accomplishes 
it. Here one of the most valuable combinations of thumb 
and finger movements is acquired, simply by imitation, and 
in the face of constant discouragement, anything but pleas- 
ant to the child. If it is due to the fact simply that 
movement gives pleasure, why does she not turn to other 
movements ? Why persist in this one failure-bringing 
thing ? Suppose there had been no impulse to do what 
she saw me do, no motor force in the simple idea of the 
rubber on the pencil, no instinct to imitate; what happy 
combination of Bain's spontaneous and accidental move- 
ments would have produced this result, and how long 
would it have taken the child if she had waited for experi- 
ences actually pleasurable to build up this motor combi- 
nation ? 

In cases of persistent imitation there is more than asso- 
ciation as such. The movements imitated are new, as 
combinations. It is probable, it is true, that various ideas 
of former movements are brought up, and that the child 
has the consciousness of general motor capacity, resting, 
in the first place, upon spontaneous impulsive reactions, 
and it is probable that this consciousness is a kind of 
massed or bunched sense of the particular member whose 
action is necessary, arising from former movements of it ; 
but on this insufficient associational basis he strikes out 



382 The Origin of Volition. 

into the deepest water of untried experience. For this 
reason, as was said above, I believe that in persistent 
imitation we have the skeleton-process of volition ; mean- 
ing that at this stage consciousness is not held down in its 
motor outcome strictly to past reactions held in memory, 
but issues as a new and more adaptive co-ordination of 
them. Physiologically, we would expect that the brain 
energy released by such a new stimulus as the pencil- 
rubber combination would pass off by the motor channels 
already fixed by spontaneous, reflex, and associated reac- 
tions, e.g., that the child would be content with a motor 
reaction of the suggestive kind. But not so. He is not 
content until he produces a new reaction of this particular 
sort ; and we must suppose that, in consequence of each 
effort of the child, the physical process is heightened and 
its issuing movement selected from, until the one copy 
imitated is produced by him. 

It will be strange, in my opinion, if this view of the 
origin of volition do not seem quite the most natural one. 
What are we really bringing about in willing anything? 
Are we not hoping that through us a kind of experience, 
object, thing in the world, may be brought about after the 
pattern of our idea or purpose? Are we not trying to 
reinstate something which we think ought to be reinstated 
for us or for others ? But is not this just the essential 
thing in imitation, — the reinstatement of something, the 
copying of what has already been in us, in others, or in 
the world ? A child imitates automatically a sound he 
hears — one case ; and then, remembering it but not hear- 
ing it, wills to make it — a second case. Where is the 
difference in the type of occurrence in the two cases, as 
far as the child's active life is concerned ? The only dif- 



Rise of Volition in the Child. 383 

ference is that, in the former case, his ear brings to him 
what he imitates, and his motor apparatus is ready for it ; 
in the latter case, his memory brings it to him, and his 
motor apparatus is not altogether ready for it. Is it not 
likely, therefore, that the simplest case of the more com- 
plex instance of this one typical process springs out of the 
most complex case of the simpler instance, — that the 
growing complexity of the conditions is just what is meant 
by the child's desire, and that the growing richness and 
explicitness and difficulty of the conscious performance, 
What is meant by his volition ? 

The position of volition in the progress of the individual, 
in his life history, may be depicted by Fig. XV., in which 
the environment (1), in the shape of suggestion (2), in 
impinging upon the organism, stimulates to volition 
(3), which, when ratified and repeated, gives rise to habits 
(4), and these habits tend to become automatic reactions 
and impulses, only to come in contact with new sugges- 
tions from the environment, and so on. Thus the life 
plan becomes fuller and wider. I have used the spiral to 
denote this progress, which is continuous throughout the 
life period. Its analogue — the ' life-spiral ' of race devel- 
opment — is given in the next figure below. 

The crisis in the child's motor development, which is 
precipitated by persistent imitation, tends to come again 
and again to the front in later years in many interesting 
situations. The following game of my children, H., of 
five, and E., of nearly three years, reflects perfectly the 
elements of choice, as my theory of the origin of volition 
requires them. I set the two children to walking fast 
around an oval table in contrary directions, marking the 
places where they were to meet, on the two opposite sides, 



334 



The Origin of Volition. 



with chairs drawn up to the table. They were to meet 
behind the first chair, shake hands, and then pass on to 
the second chair, and so on. On coming to the first chair, 
the smaller girl, E., was so impressed with the process of 
hand-shaking, in which she closely imitated her sister, and 
so thoroughly won over to her sister's action, that she 




Environment 
CO 

Fig. XV. — Illustrating Ontogenetic Development. 

invariably started off in the same direction with her, thus 
retracing her own steps, instead of passing on alone to the 
other chair. H. remonstrated with her again and again ; 
and the child's conflict in motor impulses was instructive 
in the extreme. She always took at least one step with 
H., generally more, then turned and started off alone in a 



Phylogenetic. 385 

hesitating and uncertain way, and never seemed quite 
confident until she saw her sister coming around the table 
to meet her again. 

Here it is easy to see that the course of a continued sug- 
gestive reaction — walking regularly forward — is brought 
into conflict with the new copy for imitation, supplied by 
her sister's action. There arises a balance of motor pro- 
cesses, attention is divided, and the final course is the out- 
come of a co-ordination of these rival processes in the 
attention. So she wills — and it is a real act of will — 
to go on 1 around the table alone, but only after the great 
hesitation or embarrassment which is a true indication of 
deliberation. 

§ 3. Phylogenetic. 

Coming to look at the place of volition in the race devel- 
opment of consciousness, we find that the determination of 
the method of its rise in the individual is instructive. 
Viewed objectively, a mental organism is subject, at any 
stage, to the two principles, Habit and Accommodation, 
already formulated above. Habit represents what it in- 
herits and what it tends most naturally to do, under the 
guidance of all experiences up to date. Accommodation 
represents its degree of openness or adaptability, in giving 
the new reactions, which new stimulations or arrange- 

1 This ' game,' which became very popular with the children, was really an 
experiment on my part, suggested, in my meditation on this topic, by contrast 
to an earlier experiment which I tried with H., when she was in her second 
and third years. This latter was an attempt to bring out the regularity of the 
operation of suggestion, by arranging attractive things about a room, so that 
only after reaching one could she see the next, etc. I found her the victim, 
of course, to this device. She rushed from one of the objects to another 
with great avidity. 

2 C 



386 The Origin of Volition. 

ments of stimulations call upon it to make. Now just as 
in the child the phenomena of suggestion became more 
and more complex, from the physiological reflex type up 
to the ideo-motor, deliberative, and, finally, the persistent 
type, which is volition ; so, in the animal series, there is 
a corresponding development. Volition is found only in 
animals having ideation, memory, desires. Who can doubt 
that the dog desires the morsel which he holds upon his 
nose, awaiting his master's permission to eat it ? All the 
conditions of desire are there: complex representation, 
incipient action, and inhibition. And who can doubt that 
there is volition when he gets permission and eats the 
morsel? But lower in the scale, such cases shade down 
into the sphere of suggestion, as the animal becomes less 
ideational, less social, more organic, and more dependent 
upon a small circle of stimulations. 

In volition, therefore, we find the point of meeting of 
the two principles, Habit and Accommodation, and their 
common function. It is through volition that the levelling 
effects of habit are counteracted in the higher orders of 
life, since it brings possibilities of adjustment to absent 
and distant conditions, and so wages conflict with the 
dictates of present sensation. Yet it is through volition 
on the other hand, that new habits are formed. Only by 
the continued inhibitions and controls of volition is a new 
action which is still hard to perform preserved amid the 
pressing urgencies of what is old and easy. So volition 
ministers to both kinds of development, and sums them 
up ; and so justifies both its survival and its splendid 
eminence among all the survivals in the mental series. 

To put the same thought from the point of view of any 
given stage of evolution, we may say that two factors are 



Phylo gene tic. 



387 



potent in the manifestations of the character of the or- 
ganism at whatever stage : endowment and environment. 
All habits add to endowment, and all accommodations are 
concessions of endowment to environment. Now, as is 
seen in Fig. XVI., the environment (1), working as sugges- 
tion (2), brings about a new volition (3), this is repeated 

Endowment iffaMt 
Birth 




Environment 
(1) 

Fig. XVI. — Illustrating Phylogenetic Development. 



by persistent reaction, and so forms habit (4), this is 
added to endowment (5), by heredity or natural selection, 
and so constitutes an element of instinctive character (6), 
in the next generation, and this character or instinct, in 
the new individual, again confronts the suggestions of the 
physical and moral environment (1). So we have in the 



388 The Origin 0/ Volition, 

highest exhibition of reflective volition no departure in 
type — however wide a departure it be in meaning and 
implications for philosophy — from the first adaptive reac- 
tions of organic life. Habit is formed, in the face of sug- 
gestion, through persistent imitation and volition, and 
habit, made organic in character, is modified in turn by 
changed environment which is reacted to by imitation and 
volition. What is this but a phylogenetic exhibition of 
the ' circular activity ' seen in all development ? — just what 
we would expect, if volition is really a new more complex 
form of the interaction of Habit and Accommodation in 
the growth of the individual. 

§ 4. Special Evidence. 

Besides the very high presumption that volition, con- 
sidered as a departure in the mental life, arises in the 
way of a new adaptation of the living creature to its sur- 
roundings, and that it also follows the law of accommoda- 
tion by imitation which is the agent of all the earlier 
adaptations ; and besides the presumption afforded by 
the great reasonableness of the view as based upon an 
adequate analysis of desire and volition — besides all this, 
there are several lines of objective evidence which connect 
early volition directly with reactions of the imitative type. 

I. In the first place, the instances of so-called pre- 
imitative volition in infants, reported by various observers, 
can generally be explained in much simpler terms. The 
categories of suggestion which I have marked out in an 
earlier chapter, shading off into one another as they do 
by imperceptible degrees, seem to afford plenty of latitude 
for these cases. They differ greatly from the well-defined 



Special Evidence. 389 

classes of movements called reflex, impulsive, automatic, 
etc., inasmuch as normal suggestion represents a side of 
mental growth which has heretofore gone largely unformu- 
lated. Reflex, impulse, instinct, etc., all represent habit, 
but they all presuppose accommodation, and it is only as 
we get some kind of a unifying principle of accommoda- 
tion, that the partial statements of the law of habit get any 
common significance. Suggestion is the accommodation 
side of growth, all the way up to the most vivid forms of 
consciousness, and imitation is certainly — in its conscious 
form — the most direct form of suggestion. And even 
after volition ushers in a higher type of accommodation, 
suggestion still supplies most of its impetus. So when it 
seems impossible to assign a given reaction to any one of 
the categories of habit, that is no reason for leaping at 
once to volition, the most advanced form of accommoda- 
tion ; rather ought we to attempt to find its place under 
suggestion, which is the simpler form of accommodation. 

Accordingly, we may, as the result shows, place all of 
the infant's so-called 'efforts,' in its early months, under 
the category of suggestion, only having to recognize cer- 
tain cases which are, more evidently than others, germi- 
nal to volition. My child E., early in her second month, 
strained to lift her head at the sound of any one entering 
the room, and in her fourth month, after the child had been 
frequently lifted to a sitting posture by the clasping of 
her hands around her mother's fingers, the mere sight of 
fingers extended before her made her grasp at them and 
'attempt' to raise herself. Now, as it happens, it is just 
this case of so-called ' effort ' that is appealed to as show- 
ing very early volition. Preyer says i 1 "We may, therefore, 

1 Mind of the Child, Vol. I., p. 265. 



390 The Origin of Volition. 

without hesitation, refer the period of the first distinct 
manifestation of the activity of will in the infant in this 
field, to that week in which the head, while he is awake, no 
longer bobs hither and thither — in general, the fourth to 
the fifth month." That is, Preyer holds that the successful 
holding up of the head is voluntary, while the various un- 
successful attempts of the child to do so were possibly not. 
These earlier * efforts ' are reactions brought about by 
association between the advantageous sensations secured 
through sight, taste, etc., while the child is held erect, and 
the muscular sensations of erectness. So Preyer holds, 
and this explanation is, I think, quite correct as far as it 
goes. But as to this particular act, I find these 'efforts' 
suggested by noises, sights, especially by personal sugges- 
tions, at such an early age that the reaction for erect 
posture is probably to be considered a matter of native 
inherited tendency, just as the walking reflex is. So that 
the whole thing becomes a case of physiological and sen- 
sori-motor suggestion. And even when acquired com- 
pletely — when there is no 'bobbing hither and thither' — 
there is no need whatever to find in it, as Preyer does, 
evidence of will. We adults hold our heads up because 
our normal sensational series, especially of the visual and 
muscular sensations, and their correspondences, have been 
acquired since we have been holding our heads up, and so 
they all conspire by their associative influence to stimulate 
the contractions necessary for this head position. There 
is no need to bring in volition, or even attention. And it 
is probable that these associations only reinforce the native 
tendency I have spoken of. Such efforts, therefore, on 
the part of the child, lack deliberation, and all but, per- 
haps, the faintest glimmerings of desire. 



Special Evidence. 391 

A similar account may be given of 'simple imitation.' 
It does not involve volition ; it is, rather, simple ideo-motor 
suggestion made possible by associations between visual 
and auditory stimulations, on one hand, and muscle sen- 
sations on the other. Here, again, I differ from Preyer, 
instead of having the advantage of agreeing with him, 
which the following quotation seems to give me. 1 He 
says: 2 "The first imitations are the first distinct, repre- 
sented, and willed movements." This makes all imita- 
tions voluntary : both the simple and the persistent forms. 
Now Preyer recognizes such a distinction, — ' spontaneous' 
and ' deliberative ' imitation are his terms, — but does 
nothing with the distinction. To me it is as fundamental 
in the child's development as the distinction between 
suggestion and volition, between reaction and conduct. 
Simple imitation falls easily under suggestion, because it 
involves no memory, necessarily, no selection, no variation, 
no desire, no deliberation, no effort ; only a sensation and 
a movement in organic connection. This is mere habit. 
How many of the essentials of volition does the parrot 
have, or the young bird that imitates the old one's flight ? 
Why should these acts be thought voluntary ? But persist- 
ent imitation, as we have seen, presents new problems : the 
breaking up of habit ; vivid selection on the part of con- 
sciousness ; the new, strenuous experience called effort ; 
and the actual accomplishment of the new, which we call 
the process of learning. Indeed, so great is the differ- 
ence, that whenever a natural history view of consciousness, 
which involves continuous development, is desired, it is 

1 Professor Sully called my attention to this apparent agreement. See his 
remarks, Proc. of Cong, of Exp. Psych., London meeting, 1892, p. 55. 

2 Preyer, Mind of the Child, I., 340. 



392 The Origin of Volition. 

just this magnificent appearance of discontinuity which is 
the point of greatest difficulty ; and it may be as well to 
remind the disciples of Maine de Biran, Reid, and William 
James, that the act of the infant's ' try-try-again ' gives 
them their golden opportunity. 

These instances may serve to show the way in which, 
as I think, the category of suggestion, on the accommo- 
dation side of mental development, has been neglected, 
with the result that the ' psychologist's fallacy' has been 
committed regularly by those who have read volition into 
the infant's consciousness at such early stages of its 
growth. 

As far, therefore, as cases of so-called effort shade 
downwards into suggestions, they are properly classified 
as pre-volitional. But there is a distinct class of phe- 
nomena in which the shading is the reverse, — cases in 
which the rudiments of volition must be recognized even 
in the absence of ' external copies ' for imitation. This 
brings us, in a later section, 1 to the child's imitation of its 
own memories and imaginations, and to those cases which 
illustrate the relation of 'organic' and 'plastic' imitation 
to volition. 

II. The results of a research on students, which I re- 
port elsewhere 2 under the title, 'Persistent Imitation 
Experiments.' The subject is told to imitate a simple 
figure, called the ' copy,' set before him, drawing in pencil 
or chalk, at a single stroke. Then he compares his per- 
formance with the copy and tries again ; and so on, until 

1 Below, § 5 of this chapter. 

2 See Proc. of Cong, of Exp. Psychology, London, August, 1892, p. 51, for 
first statement, and details with discussion in The Psychological Review, II., 
1895. 



Special Evidence, 



393 



satisfied with the result. This done, the number of his 
efforts is noted. This I may call in the tables (VIIL, IX.) 
the case 'with comparison.' Then he is instructed to go 
through the same experiment again, except that his eyes 
are now bandaged, so that he is not able to compare his 

TABLE VIII. 



Copy. 


Will Stimulus 
(Av. No. of Efforts 
in Each Experi- 
ment). 


No! of 
Experiments. 


No. of 
Persons. 


a. External visual, with comparison 


3-571 






b. External visual, without compar- 


J- ratio 1.72 


51 


6 


ison 


2.09 J 






c. Memory image after ten minutes, 






with comparison 


2 ' 1 






d. Memory image after ten minutes, 


L ratio 1.60 


30 


4 


without comparison 


1.27 J 






e. Memory image after fifteen min- 








utes, with comparison 


5.66] 






/ Memory image after fifteen min- 


L ratio 1.55 


6 


1 


utes, without comparison . . . 


3.66 J 







Persistent Imitation Experiments : A. Influence of comparison = increase 
of will stimulus from about 75% to 50% according to lapse of time. 



own results with the copy. The number of efforts is 
noted as before. This is the case 'without comparison.' 

Now it is evident that the relative number of ' efforts ' 
in each case may be taken to indicate the amount of 
tendency the subject has to continue the imitation, — a 
quantity technically known as 'will stimulus.' The results 
given in the tables show that in the case 'without com- 



394 



The Origin of Volition. 



parison ' the subject is liable to be satisfied with a smaller 
number of efforts ; this would indicate that when the new 
visual picture is not reported, there is not the same will 
stimulus. But in the other case, ' with comparison,' effort 
after effort is made, until success is attained, or until 
the subject gives it up; so the inference is that there is 
then continued will stimulus until either the motor plu- 
rality is overcome, or the stimulus effect is itself inhibited 

TABLE IX. 



Copy. 


Will Stimulus 
(Av. No. of Efforts 
in Each Experi- 
ment.) 


No. of 
Experiments. 


No. of 
Persons. 


a. External visual, with comparison 

b. Memory image after ten minutes, 

with comparison 

c. Memory image after one minute, 

without comparison 

d. Memory image after ten minutes, 

without comparison 


3-571 

r ratio 1.79 
2. J 

2.09 1 

[•ratio 1.65 
1.27 J 


51 
30 
51 

30 


6 

4 
6 

4 



Persistent Imitation Experiments: B. Diminution of motor force of 
memory after ten minutes = from about 60 % to 80 %, according as com- 
parison is made, or not, of results with memory image. 



by discouragement. The figures (Table VIII., A) show 
that in the case of comparison there is an increase of from 
75 per cent, down to 50 per cent, in the will stimulus for 
memory durations from one down to ten minutes. 

Table IX., B. shows the further interesting result that if 
the external 'copy' be removed and the subject rely upon 
his memory, the number of efforts tends to decrease in 
some ratio with the length of time elapsed. This is what 



Special Evidence, 395 

we should expect from other experiments on the faithful- 
ness of memory 1 which show that the memory process 
loses its definite character with time. The figures show 
a diminution of the motor force of a memory after ten 
minutes from about 60 per cent, to 80 per cent., accord- 
ing as comparison of results with the memory image is 
made or not. 

This investigation gives evidence of the necessity for 
motor co-ordination — what is called ' comparison ' — in 
the antecedents to voluntary movement. This is the 
essential contention of the doctrine of the genesis of 
volition stated above ; and it is interesting to find that in 
our adult life our choices are still backed in a regular 
way by that dynamogenic agency which I call 'will 
stimulus.' 

III. Another kind of evidence is found in the behaviour 
of the attention. In a great class of pathological cases of 
anaesthesia which involves paralysis when the eyes or ears 
are closed, but not when they are open — we find evidence 
that disturbances of attention bring about derangements of 
voluntary movement. This may occur even when the pa- 
tient keeps intact all the apparatus of movement, and all 
the memories of the movements which he desires to make. 

1 Experiments on memory faithfulness have been made by Wolfe, by 
Ebbinghaus, by Muller, and by Warren and myself {Proceedings of the Amer. 
Psych. Assoc, 1893, P« *8; see also The Psychological Review, 1895, where 
the results of these ' Persistent Imitation Experiments ' are to be reported and 
discussed). The method of testing memory by measuring the amount of 
motor force or ' will stimulus ' possessed by memories of various duration, was 
first proposed by me in connection with these experiments (see Proceedings of 
Cong, of Exp. Psychol., 2d Session, London, 1892, p. 51). In the paper 
referred to as soon to be published, this method is called the ' dynamogenic 
method,' and a correlation is suggested between the relative motor force of a 
memory, after a certain interval, and its degree of faithfulness to its original 
perception, after the same interval. 



396 The Origin of Volition, 

And the result is sometimes reversed ; a patient may be able 
to move a member except when he sees it. Here the visual 
images inhibit the movement. 1 In the former case, the 
attention has become dependent for certain voluntary- 
functions, upon immediate visual or auditory stimulation, 
and in its absence, these voluntary functions are impos- 
sible. 2 This shows that a degree of correlation of optical, 
kinesthetic, auditory, etc., impressions is necessary for 
voluntary movement, and that this correlation is here, as 
everywhere else, a function of the attention. In normal 
voluntary movement, attention need not be given neces- 
sarily to the muscular movement itself, — although that is 
one type of voluntary attention, — but it may be given to 
some other kind of sensation, auditory, visual, etc., which 
has come to play the leading part in this particular move- 
ment, and under the lead of which the correlation which 
issues in movement is effected. 

More is said of this below in the general theory of volun- 
tary movement; 3 but here it may be noted how clearly 
this accords with what we found above to be the behaviour 
of the child's attention in performing its first voluntary 
drawings. His attention has to be fastened upon the 
thing or ' copy ' imitated, not on his hand, nor on his 
memories of movement. Passy finds that a young child 
copies a new thing or copy by giving attention to his 
visual memory pictures. This is shown, as I have said 
above, by the fact that he puts into his drawing, certain 

1 Janet, Un cas d'Aboulie, Revue Philos., March, 1891. 

2 See Binet and Fere, who report a patient who could thrust out his tongue 
only when he saw it in a mirror, Arch, de Physiologie, 1887, II., p. 371; Pick, 
Zeitsch. filr Physiologie, IV., 1892, 161 ff., and Baldwin, Philos, Review, II., 
1893, P« 2 °6« 

s Below, Chap. XV., §§ 3, 4. 



Special Evidence. 397* 

features such as ears, arms, and minor details, which are 
not in the actual thing or copy, but only in his own earlier 
visual pictures. So I find that in imitating new words, there 
is a constant tendency on the part of the child, to reproduce 
terms he already knows in place of the words of the new 
lesson. In imitating speech also, the child does not learn 
by paying attention to the lips of the speaker. He often 
learns the guttural letters, which are not spoken with the 
lips, sooner than many of the others. 1 Much less does he 
pay attention to his own lips ; from all appearances he 
does not know that he is using his lips. The most that 
lip sensations or memories do is to supply to him the series 
of associations which follow upon the auditory stimulations. 
It is these last to which he pays attention. 

Cases are abundant not only in which aphasia follows 
lesions of the auditory centre, but in which it follows le- 
sions located in the connections between the auditory and 
the word-seeing and word-hearing centres. Such a lesion 
interferes with the correlative or associative function. And 
it is extraordinarily suggestive of the new function found in 
persistent imitation, that while this latter often becomes 
impossible, in these cases, yet the simple imitative copying 
of sounds heard or movements seen, may still take place. 
Simple ideo-motor suggestion, as typified in simple imita- 
tion, remains intact ; but persistent imitation, effort, the 
correlation involved in voluntary attention and movement, 
all this is lost. 

Janet thinks 2 the incapacity to touch and handle objects 
in certain cases, is inversely as the degree of recognition or 
familiarity with the objects, their uses, etc. ; which is to 
say, — when we come to understand that recognition may 

1 See Tracy, Psychology of Childhood. 2 L$c. cit. 



398 The Origin of Volition. 

itself be simply a motor attitude or tendency of attention, 
— that the patient's ability depends largely upon the 
degree of involuntariness of attention, that is, of the 
degree of simple habit of attending. 

In view of what has now been said, the real difference 
between what is voluntary and what is not becomes very 
emphatic, and we have the key, I think, to the under- 
standing of total aboulia, or lack of will, in cases of dis- 
ease ; and partial aboulia, seen in the loss of particular 
voluntary functions, such as speech, writing, etc. 1 These 
matters furnish a further line of evidence which I shall 
now put forward. 

IV. Evidence from aboulia, partial or total, may now be 
brought. The general principle of mental pathology that 
the dissolution of complex functions follows the inverse 
order of their acquisition, applies to the voluntary activi- 
ties in two ways. 

First, we should find stages of degeneration correspond- 
ing to the great epochs of mental development seen in the 
phylogenetic or race series ; this would seem to require 

1 While not able to speak as an expert in Mental Pathology, I yet venture to 
express the opinion that there is only a difference of degree between the com- 
plete loss of will, the inability to make effort or to inhibit impulse, called aboulia, 
and some cases of the loss of particular voluntary functions only, — giving 
aphasia, agraphia, etc., — despite the apparent difference that, in these latter 
cases, mental determination or effort to do the act in question remains unim- 
paired. The patient in agraphia, it might be said, makes effort to write, 
but fails; his will is healthy, only his handwriting fails. On the contrary, the 
function called will really gets its right to be from the co-ordination of simpler 
functions, its stability and force must depend upon the support it gets from 
these simpler co-ordinations or functions; and the derangement of any one 
of them, such as handwriting, — unless of course the lesion be peripheral, — 
must withdraw support from the whole, and so weaken the function of will 
generally. We are all aboulic just to the degree in which our attentive co- 
ordinations are unstable and independent of one another. This seems to be 
required on any psycho-physical conception of will. Cf. Chap. XV. 



Special Evidence, 399 

that voluntary action should be impaired by a less serious 
derangement than simple suggestive reactions ; and that 
the derangement of the ideo-motor should precede that of 
the sensori-motor. Also that these last, which involve clear 
consciousness, might be damaged or absent while reflex 
functions still remain, and that, last of all, the rhythmic, 
so-called automatic processes, which are necessary to life 
in general, should remain alone upon the field. All of 
these propositions, except the first, which concerns volun- 
tary action, are such commonplaces in psychology as well 
as in physiology, that I need mention them only to give 
new confirmation to the great features of the phylogenetic 
and ontogenetic parallelism on the side of mind. 

But, second, this progressive impairment of mental fac- 
ulty in the individual repeats inversely the process by 
which the individual himself learns his lessons in action. 
The man retrogrades literally into second childhood, both 
in regard to his power of mind as a whole, and in regard 
to the particular elements of any distinct functions which 
happen to be affected by disease or accident. 

These two cases illustrate the two very distinct and in- 
structive phases of voluntary failure, already characterized 
as total and partial aboulia. In the former case, the im- 
pairment is general, extending to the co-ordinating function 
as a whole, and so involving each particular activity equally. 
The old man writes tremblingly, speaks falteringly, recog- 
nizes faces and things badly, walks haltingly, — all of which 
follow from the fact that he is able to attend only par- 
tially and fitfully. In partial aboulia, on the other hand, 
one special function is impaired, or more ; the rest remain 
intact Here belong sensory aphasia, agraphia, arising 
from arterial obstructions, central lesion, etc. Some par- 



400 The Origin of Volition. 

ticular prop to the attention gets knocked away, and so 
one line of voluntary activity is seriously injured or de- 
stroyed ; but the co-ordination of the other brain seats is 
still intact, and their functions are weakened only to the 
degree in which their structure of attention also rested 
upon this prop. 

Both these cases of loss or impairment of will may be 
put in evidence as showing the place of volition in mental 
development, provided only the law be true that mind 
degenerates in the same order as it grows, only back- 
wards ; that is, that the function which it acquires latest, 
it loses first and most easily. We then have to ask what 
the actual facts of mental pathology are which show con- 
ditions of the impairment of will. 

Considering total aboulia first, the condition of general 
levelling down or decay of the mental faculties, gives us 
our instances. There are three recognized cases of such 
general mental break-down, all involving total or progres- 
sive aboulia ; first, destruction of the cerebral hemispheres, 
corresponding to their removal from animals by the experi- 
mental physiologists ; second, temporary subsidence of con- 
sciousness under the influence of drugs, or in derangement 
of the vaso-motor mechanism, as in faintness, trance, fits, 
etc. ; and third, diseases distinctly recognized as mental, 
such as hysteria, of which the universal symptoms are 
certain derangements of consciousness, enfeebled attention, 
remarkable perversions of movement, etc. To these must 
be added idiocy or congenital mental defect. 1 Looking at 

1 I omit the phenomena of old age, since neither physiologists nor psy- 
chologists have given them any very fruitful study. The appearance of 
what seems to be increased power of will — self-will — in old persons, is 
perhaps due to the great strengthening of habit, together with the general 
narrowness of consciousness. 



Special Evidence. 401 

each of these four cases, we find very evident confirmation 
of the view of volition explained in the foregoing pages. 

In the various experiments recorded of extirpation of 
the hemispheres, the phenomena now well known by the 
phrases ' psychic-blindness,' 'psychic-deafness,' etc., appear. 
These phrases are contrasted with * cortical' blindness, 
deafness, etc. In the former, the animal loses all his 
sense of the meaning, associations, value, of what he sees 
and hears. He still sees and hears, and he still has 
reactions appropriate to sight and hearing; but he does 
not show the reactions peculiar to what he has learned, in 
all his life, about what he sees and hears. After certain 
operations upon his brain the dog sees a whip, but is no 
longer afraid of it ; sees food, but no longer moves forward 
to secure it ; hears a voice, but no longer recognizes it. 
What psychologists mean by 'apperception' — the under- 
standing of a thing, as opposed to the mere seeing or hear- 
ing of it — this is gone. The thing seen or heard is no 
longer a co-ordinated thing, built up of memories, varied 
sensations, motor dynamogenies, and pleasures or pains ; 
but it is a bare, worthless stimulus to reflex or suggestive 
reaction. 

Lack of co-ordination ? Then lack of attention, lack of 
persistence, of effort, of volition ! ' Exactly,' says the 
brainless pigeon, 'that is what I lack/ Attention, effort, 
volition — these are the motor correlatives of the co-ordi- 
nations of memories with present sensations, the motor 
correlatives of association, of apperception. Lack on one 
side, the sensory, then a fortiori lack on the other, the 
motor. The motor it is, exactly, which holds the sensory 
elements together. The creature shows, in fact, no com- 
plex activity, no curiosity, no constancy of attention, no 

2D 



402 The Origin of Volition. 

persistence in his undertakings — indeed, no undertakings, 
no adaptation to new conditions. He lacks all means of 
taking care of himself, and perishes of hunger with food 
under his nose. 

Now substitute men for dogs and pigeons, and substi- 
tute disease or drugs for the operator, and you have, in 
cases of varying clearness, cases of general progressive 
aboulia in man ; all those cases in which consciousness 
subsides into the depths of mere vague feltness, so to 
speak, of sensations coming in and movements made upon 
them. Two typical instances may be cited, the two for 
which we have exact observations. One of these is the 
rather obscure phenomenon of 'Jacksonian re-evolution,' 
and the other is the fact, equally obscure until very 
recently, of hysteria. 

By ' re-evolution ' is meant gradual recovery from a 
swoon or fit of such a gross character that the mental 
faculties had given way, and the patient had become all 
but unconscious. It is evident that in such cases, in 
which the recovery is comparatively slow, tests may be 
applied at intervals to discover the order in which the 
various functions return ; this order will evidently repre- 
sent the inverse order of their loss in the fit, and so the 
original order of their development. 

A recent case reported by Pick, 1 furnishes perhaps the 
most careful and detailed observations yet made on the 
re-evolution of the function of speech — a function which, 
by reason of its complexity, lends itself to recovery 
by stages. Four stages were found in this epileptic 
patient's recovery from complete unconsciousness : first, 
no response whatever to words spoken or written ; second, 

1 Archiv fur Psychiatrie, XXII., heft 3, pp. 25 ff. 



Special Evidence. 403 

the parrot-like repetition of words heard (an imitative 
condition called echolalia ; the man could strike a match 
only when he saw some one else strike one) ; third, a dazed 
sort of reply by counter-questions ; and fourth, intelligent 
speech with voluntary forming of sentences. 

The evidence from such cases as this as to the place 
of volition in the evolution scale is self-evident. The 
first form of response, echolalia, is simple verbal imitation, 
i.e.y sensori-motor suggestion from a brain-level below the 
cortex. It involves no extended associations. The next 
stage represents, I think, a groping of the man after 
coherence, agreement, co-ordination ; just as the child gets 
dissatisfied with his simple imitations, has a sense of dawn- 
ing capacity to identify, compare, and select, of a tendency 
to be a willing being ; and gropes toward the next stage of 
development. Then comes the recovery of the centres and 
their connections. The man's associative channels open 
up and the currents flow in and out. He remembers his 
word-meanings, compares them, feels the proper energies 
tingle in lip and tongue in co-ordinate movement, and 
so reaches voluntary speech again. In short, volition in 
speech has come back on the basis of simple imitation, 
through a period of tentative trial and effort to co-ordinate 
movements. Could there be a reconstruction in plainer 
terms of the child's attainment of voluntary speech 
through imitations, tentative and then repeated ; or a 
plainer demonstration that the normal way of volition is 
through imitation ? 

The other case — the general phenomena of hysteria in 
their varied combinations — may be spoken of only in a 
general way, since the quotation of observations would 
be too lengthy. As an authority, I appeal, as I have 



404 The Origin of Volition. 

already done, to Prof. Pierre Janet, whose works 1 are 
more psychological than those of most professed alienists, 
and who, unlike many of the rest, is aware that there 
are philosophical problems in the world, no less than 
medical. At the end of a recent discussion of 'Defi- 
nitions of Hysteria/ he concludes by himself defining 
hysteria thus : 2 " A disease especially characterized by 
mental symptoms of which the principal are enfeeblement 
of the faculty of mental synthesis ; retraction of the field 
of consciousness ; the disappearance of a certain num- 
ber of elementary phenomena — called stigmata — from 
consciousness and from personal perception ; a tendency 
to the permanent and complete division of personality ; 
the formation of many independent groups of phenomena ; 
the co-existence of these systems with each other or their 
alteration by each other, giving rise to crises, somnam- 
bulisms, subconscious actions, and finally, through the 
defect of synthesis, the formation of certain parasitic ideas 
whose development is so complete and independent that 
they break up all normal control of consciousness and 
manifest themselves in various troubles of a physical and 
accidental sort." 

From this definition and from the description of the 
phenomena by Charcot and other writers, we may say 
that the outstanding psychological characteristics of such 
mental degeneracy are : (1) ' enfeeblement of the faculty 
of psychic synthesis ' ; (2) loss of control and direction of 
the mental life ; (3) the breaking up of the material of 

1 Automatisme psychologique, Atats Mentals des Hysteriques (2 vols.), 
Quelques Definitions R'ecentes de V Hysteric in Arch, dc Neurologie, Juin et 
Juillet, 1893. 

2 See pp. 49, 50 of the paper cited last in the preceding note. 



Special Evidence. 405 

personality, and the possible formation of several inde- 
pendent psychic groups, either successive or existing 
together; (4) an enormous development of the tendency 
to imitation ; (5) the growth of mental suggestibility, tend- 
ing to the complete dominion of controlling ideas and im- 
perative movements, all of which are summed up in the 
last characteristic ; (6) general and progressive aboulia. 

Here, again, we note at once, that with enfeeblement 
of mental synthesis goes increased suggestibility, which 
takes the form, whenever possible, of direct imitation. 
And, further, we find the process of re-evolution striving 
to do its proper work in the tendency of the separate 
groups of psychic facts to get themselves the appearance 
to personality by partial synthesis. As James puts it, 
they 'tend to personal form.' What is this but the 
reverse way of mental growth, whose terms are simple 
suggestion, — sensori-motor and ideo-motor, — imitation, 
synthesis, which last, in its various stages, illustrates the 
growing success of effort, and the growing independence 
of the one great synthesis whose pre-eminence stands for 
stable personality and intelligent volition I 

The absence of effort in certain cases is shown in the 
fact that the patients are often unable to learn any new 
movements, although they can perform, in response to a 
suggestion, those which have become habits, 1 — just the 
condition of the child before its first ' persistent ' imita- 
tions. 

A further remarkable confirmation of the distinction 

1 Janet (Aut. psy., p. 64) calls this condition, on the memory side, ' antero- 
grade amnesia' — an unfortunate phrase. It is simply, as far as action is 
concerned, general ' apraxia,' or the inability to effect the synthesis necessary 
for a movement, through failure of some of the memories which go into the 
synthesis. 



406 The Origin of Volition. 

between voluntary and involuntary imitation is seen in the 
phenomena of unconscious writing, from which the hypoth- 
esis of ' secondary personality ' gets some support. The 
anaesthetic hands of certain blind-folded patients respond 
in writing appropriately, either in lines of habit, or by 
imitative repetition. Not only are the movements here 
involuntary ; they are also quite unconscious. 1 And the 
view that the attention and the co-ordination which it 
effects are the real vehicle of volition is shown in the 
negative 2 fact, that as soon as the patients are allowed 
to see the limbs in question, which they know to be 
paralytic, no response whatever from these limbs can 
be secured. This belongs to the theory of ' control ' 
taken up in a later connection. 3 Furthermore, the anaes- 
thetic hand, hidden behind a screen, will imitate the 
movements made by the patient voluntarily with the 
un-anaesthetic hand, giving what may be called acquired 
' accompanying movements.' 4 And yet again, the anaes- 
thetic hand traces out, when a pencil is put into it, and 
it is left undisturbed, mental pictures as they exist in the 
subconsciousness of the owner of the hand, what I have 
called, in the case of the child, simple * tracery-imitation.' 
The development of this tendency under the law of habit 
accounts, by the way, for all the 'intelligent' results of 
planchette writing. 

1 See Binet and Fere, Arch, de Phys., 1877, II., pp. 339 ff., and Binet, Les 
Alterations de la Personality. 

2 Negative, i.e., to the other remarkable case of patients who cannot move 
the limbs unless they do see them. In the cases now cited, voluntary move- 
ment is impossible, and the incapacity is extended by suggestion to the invol- 
untary movements of the organ upon which the attention is fixed. For the 
other, contrasted, cases see the reference given in the next note. 

3 See Chap. XV., § 4, below. 

4 Binet and Fere, loc. cit.> 340-345. 



Special Evidence. 407 

Cases of congenital mental defect, of which idiocy and 
imbecility are the extremes, teach us about the same 
thing. Weak-minded children are notably different from 
other children in two things : the difference in the character 
of their early movements, and the difference in their ability 
to learn new movements. In regard to the first point : 
their movements are abrupt, undisciplined, isolated from 
the rest of the organic happenings, jerky, and essentially 
unaccountable. The normal child gets disciplined by his 
first experiences, and his movements show the subduing 
and regulating effects of all kinds of suggestion. But 
the child which we call, in varying degrees, 'natural,' is 
not so ; much that we mean by acquired nervous inhibition 
is wanting, and the character of the movements becomes 
at once an index of the mental state. He imitates well, 
but repeats his imitations without modification. He lacks 
voluntary power both for action and for control. 

This characteristic leads at once to the second : the 
child fails to learn. He progresses as far as the natural 
growth of the organism carries him. All his senses may 
be perfect ; his vegetative processes normal ; his reflexes 
good ; his native reactive couples responsive. This means, 
in general, that he grows well, up to the simple, imitative 
stage ; then he stops ! Stops where, in the reverse process 
of unlearning, the hysteric and hypnotic patients stop ! 
He gets a few useful associations drilled into him by force 
of habit. He may come to do the simpler things which 
he sees others do, and make the simpler word sounds 
which others make. But he does not initiate anything, 
does not learn by his own effort. He is like the brainless 
pigeon. Idiots are generally very imitative. Imbeciles 
are lower still ; if they get any form in the sounds they 
emit, it is only what Seglas calls ' reflex echolalia.' 



408 The Origin of Volition. 

I think this indicates very fairly, in these poor defec- 
tives, about the condition of things which we have found 
in cases of hysterical and cataleptic degeneracy. Here is 
the same lack of mental synthesis, so-called mental blind- 
ness, deafness, dumbness, 1 the exaggeration of unruly 
movements, inability to acquire anything new, excessive 
imitation, general suggestibility. The idiot lacks the 
'third-level' co-ordination, just as all the rest do. Volun- 
tary inhibition is gone, and a measure of involuntary 
inhibition, also. Attention is weakened, vacillating, in- 
constant. Heredity defect has done, in this case, what 
disease has done in the other cases, i.e., drawn a sharp 
line between action which is imitative and simple, and 
action which is still imitative, but complex, — the latter 
alone being persistent, effortful, acquisitive, voluntary. 
These poor creatures have mental images, and make 
responses to them, but they are unable, in Janet's phrase, 
d'effectuer la synthase? 

Passing now to what I have designated partial aboulia, 
we have to consider the decay or destruction of particular 
motor functions, asking whether, if we apply the law that 
the order of loss is the inverse of that of development, we 
find evidence for our theory of the rise of volition. This 
examination can best be made in connection with complex 
functions or acquisitions, and speech and handwriting at 

1 The expression ' mental dumbness ' was suggested first by the present 
writer for the inability to speak intelligently, as opposed to the mere ability to 
imitate sounds. See the article, ' Internal Speech and Song,' Philos. Review, 
II., 1893, P- 389. See also, below, Chap. XIV., § 1. 

2 The characteristics of the idiot's movements are given by Guicciardi, 
Zeitsch. fur Psychologies IV., p. 154, as, in order, progressive inco-ordination 
of voluntary movement, loss of voluntary movement, increased imitation. 



Special Evidence. 409 

once suggest themselves. I accordingly have to cite evi- 
dence from aphasia and agraphia. Other functions which 
do not involve so clearly the complex co-ordinations learned 
by voluntary effort may also be cited in their place as we 
proceed. 

It may be well to give, at the outset, the general result 
of the detailed examination of cases of such troubles. The 
order of acquisition of the elements of speech and hand- 
writing is this : first, in the stage of suggestive reaction 
before the rise of conscious imitation, we find hearing of 
sounds with some very simple associations, also suggestive 
adaptation of movements of the tongue, hands, etc., under 
the direct stimulus of associations, pleasures and pains, 
etc. ; second, in the stage of simple imitation, we find full 
recognition of objects and musical tunes, some slight 
power of song in individual children, imperfect articula- 
tion, increasing co-ordination of movements, though still 
without effort or volition ; third, in the epoch of persistent 
imitation, we find full understanding of speech, the rapid 
acquisition of co-ordinated movements in speaking and 
writing, and also visual sign interpretation which leads on 
to the ability to read. 

On the side of disease, therefore, we would expect, if 
the acquisition proceeds by stages so well marked, that at 
least the same three great types of function .would be 
reasonably independent in their loss. That is, we should 
find that the highest type of function, revealed in volition 
and conscious synthesis, would in some cases be lost alone, 
and that to its loss might then be added that of the func- 
tion which corresponds to sensation and simple imitative 
adaptation, but which does not show intelligence and con- 
scious selection. Finally, in the most fundamental derange- 



410 The Origin of Volition. 

ment of all, even the degree of acquisition represented by 
direct imitation and reflex speech should be impaired along 
with the two higher kinds. 

Our expectations are so clearly fulfilled in current inter- 
pretations of defects in the active life, that the very 
nomenclature of the subject gives us words for these very 
distinctions. Loss of the first type is called, as we have 
seen, psychic blindness, deafness, etc., according as one 
sense or another is affected, issuing in associative or 
higher sensory aphasia. The term dyslogia has been ap- 
plied to this state by Seglas. It has equal application to 
various functions, but applies especially to speech. The 
second stage has had, if not equally general recognition, 
equally happy characterization by the same author, who 
calls defects of speech of this general nature dysphasia. 
It is aphasia of the sensory or motor type, due to the loss 
of a specific kind of sensory or motor memory through 
a lesion in a specific centre. Finally, the greatest defect 
of speech is dyslalia, or aphasia due to lesions in the lower 
centres. 

We may now, before going into more detail, draw up a 
table showing these functions, and the corresponding 
defects of the three great classes described, using the 
terms current for the function of speech, but bearing in 
mind the general application of the divisions themselves 
to complex motor acquisitions in general. See Table X. 

The main point in discussion — the origin of Volition — 
is isolated in the question as to the distinction between 
dyslogia and dysphasia. The question is this : Do we 
find that whenever the mind is impaired to the degree 
designated, in respect of special acts, by the phrase am- 
nesia, — the loss of some function demanding sponta- 



Special Evidence. 



411 



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412 The Origin of Volition, 

neous co-ordinated memories, and action in view of such 
co-ordinated memories, — that voluntary acquisitions are 
then impaired, while purely sensori-motor actions remain 4 ? 
In other words, do these kinds of aphasia — speaking of 
speech in particular — show a functional line between per- 
sistent effort and simple imitation ? 

In support of the truthfulness of the exhibit made in. 
the table — as far as pathology goes — I may make certain 
observations : — 

Among the numerous schematic diagrams which have 
been proposed to illustrate aphasia in its different forms, 
that of Lichtheim has had most recognition. 1 It is not 
my purpose to add to these constructions, which have rep- 
resented, in part at least, the individual interpretations of 
the particular writers. The ' motor square ' which has 
been found serviceable in the preceding sections, presents 
a modification of Lichtheim's scheme in the one direction 
in which current psychology finds some of its most impor v 
tant problems ; and it thus enables us to bring the prob- 
lems of aphasia into connection with general psychological 
theory. Lichtheim's diagram, Fig. XVII. a., gives no means 
of distinguishing between the centre of muscular sensa- 
tions and memories, the kinesthetic centre, on one side, 
and the true motor centre, the innervation centre, on the 
other side ; but includes both, under the one symbol M. 
In my ' motor square' diagram, Fig. XVII. b., these two 
possibly distinct areas, and perfectly distinct functions, are 
distinguished, thus making it possible to represent, dia- 
grammatically, a distinction current in psychology. The 
distinction is required in the interpretation of cases of 
aphasia. Lichtheim himself admits this, and constructs 

1 Brain, Part XXVIII., January, 1885, p. 436 (his Fig. 1). 



Special Evidence. 



413 



an awkward supplement to his diagram when he comes to 
interpret certain individual cases. 1 If my ' motor square ' 
be squeezed together, so that the opposite corners, mc and 
mp, coincide, it then becomes identical with Lichtheim's. 
The isolation of mp, however, is required by all the evi- 
dence now accumulated, which goes to show that move- 
ments may be stimulated directly from the sensory centres 
{sg\ sight, hearing, etc.), or directly from the higher co- 




me 



m cl 

a. Scheme of Lichtheim. 




mt 

b. Motor Square.* 



Fig. XVII. 



ordinating centre (cc) — supposing it to exist, as all the 
diagrams, interpreting the facts functionally, represent — 
without necessary stimulation of the kinesthetic cortical 
movement centre (mc). This class of cases, now very 
generally accepted, has no separate recognition, I think, 
in any of the schemes except my * motor square/ 

Interpreting the ' motor square ' in terms of the three 
great functional classes of motor acquisitions, we may say 

1 Loc. cit., pp. 437, 443, 451 (his Figs. 2, 4, 5). 

2 My use of this diagram, before I saw Lichtheim's, in class-room demon- 
stration of the ' motor ' problems in psychology, has proved it so convenient 
that I have ventured to print it in my text-books. Most of the diagrams proposed 
by others are intended to illustrate the different sensory areas which contribute 
to speech (Charcot's, Kussmaul's in Sforungen der Sprache, p. 182, etc.); 
these centres are all bunched in Lichtheim's and mine, the purpose being to 
illustrate types of motor disturbance, rather than particular local lesions. 



414 The Origin of Volition. 

that aboulia, and the equivalent dyslogia, result from some 
disturbance in cc, or its connections, whereby the co-ordi- 
nating centre (Lichtheim's Begriffscentrum, B) is cut off, 
either (1), from the motor discharge centre mp y for the 
particular function in question, or (2), from the centres 
from which the stimulus or material of co-ordination comes. 
All the varieties of amnesia fall under (2), in as far as the 
particular memory pictures whose absence constitutes the 
amnesia observed, are necessary to the concentration of 
attention by which the voluntary performance of the action 
in question is brought about. That is, it is possible that a 
particular case of inability to perform an act of speech may 
be due, apart from injury to cc t to a lesion which breaks 
any of the three connections cc, mp\ cc, sg, mp; or cc t 
mc, mp. The other case (1) includes instances in which 
the failure to speak is due to lack of ability to get the 
attention fixed upon anything which would represent the 
movement itself apart from both kinaesthetic impressions 
and special sense memories. Such cases would involve a 
doctrine of innervation sensations and memories due to the 
condition of the motor discharge centre itself. 1 

The two other cases of possible lesion in this highest 
region, involving aboulia only, represent respectively sen- 
sory amnesic aphasia of the several kinds known as visual, 
auditory, etc., and motor amnesic aphasia. It is evident 
that a break in the line cc, sg would accomplish both of 
these ; that is, the patient would be unable to speak volun- 

1 So Waller's region {Brain, XIV., p. 1 79, and XV., pp. 380 ff.), which is 
called by him the ' locus ' of subjective as well as objective fatigue, would, if 
cut off from its connection with the co-ordinating centre, produce aphasia, 
even when the kinaesthetic sensation series were all intact. This possibility, 
whatever we may think of its probability, it is impossible to represent on 
Lichtheim's or any other of the earlier diagrams. 



Special Evidence. 415 

tarily, however he might preserve all his special centres, 
both sensory and motor. This is the case where a patient 
is unable to speak or write spontaneously, although he can 
repeat or write words which he hears or sees, written or 
printed (using the line mc, mp). It is possible, however, 
since the symbol sg represents the various sensory seats 
taken together, that a function like speech might in some 
cases not be impaired when a particular connection cc, sg is 
cut, since the attention might be stimulated by a discharge 
from an alternative sensory seat. This gives its validity 
to the distinction between the so-called types of speech, as 
auditory, visual, motor, etc. 

It is evident, therefore, that a certain very important 
class of functions would be left to a man of such partial 
aboulia. First, he might be able to perform a voluntary 
function when his attention was supplied with some in- 
direct stimulus : so the cases in which voluntary movement 
is possible only when the eyes are open. Or, second, he 
might be able to perform other voluntary co-ordinations 
in which the particular class of memories now cut off are 
not essential elements ; and third, he might be able to per- 
form, reflexly or by suggestion, imitation, etc., functions 
which he could not perform voluntarily. 

All of these deductions respecting aboulic patients are 
securely established by pathological facts. The last men- 
tioned is the critical distinction, and some cases illustrat- 
ing it may be cited, from a great number available. They 
are selected with two especial points in view : first, as 
showing the fact of conscious simple imitation in patients 
to whom all persistent effortful reactions had become im- 
possible; and, second, as showing the inability of such 
patients to learn again the function which is lost, without 



416 The Origin of Volition. 

resorting to a painstaking repetition by imitation of a new 
kind of motor association. By this means such a patient 
may train his attention over again upon a new class of 
memory images. 

i. Case of Pick already cited. 1 This man was able to 
strike a match only when he saw the proper movements 
of another (pp. 764 and 768). He echoed words he heard, 
and he even repeated with the questioning inflection ques- 
tions addressed to himself (pp. 568-569 and 771-773) ; 
but he had lost all spontaneous speech. Pick interprets the 
case (p. 774) as one of ' transcortical word-deafness ' de- 
scribed by Lichtheim and Wernicke, which arises from a 
lesion of the line B M in Lichtheim's diagram, or of the 
line cc> sg in my ' motor square.' It is a case of verbal 
amnesic aphasia, or dyslogia. It involves aboulia, but not 
dysphasia. 

2. Case of Pitres, 2 showing agraphia, in which ' tracery 
imitation ' remained. This case also shows the possible 
mutual isolation of speech and writing, inasmuch as there 
was no aphasia. Here we have a lesion of the tract cc, sg 
(Lichtheim's BM) for writing movements only, the lesion 
not extending to the corresponding tracts for speech 
movements. 

3. A different complication is shown in another case 
cited by Ross, 3 in which deep-seated aphasia (dysphasia) is 
associated with alexia, without agraphia. This patient's 
speech movements were probably dependent upon the 
visual word centre for stimulation, while his writing move- 

1 Arch, fur Psychiatric, XXII., heft 3. 

2 Cited by Ross, Wood's Medical Monographs, Vol. VI., No. I, 1890, p. 

152-153. 

3 Ibid., pp. 197-199. 



Special Evidence. 417 

merits were not so dependent ; consequently alexia (lesion 
of the visual word centre) carried with it amnesic aphasia, 
but not agraphia. 

4. Case cited by Lichtheim. 1 It shows the preserva- 
tion of a variety of simple imitative or ideo-motor sugges- 
tive reactions, while the corresponding voluntary functions 
were lost. The patient could copy handwriting, write to 
dictation, repeat words heard, and read aloud, but he could 
not write nor speak spontaneously. It is accordingly a 
case of amnesic aphasia and agraphia, involving loss of the 
voluntary functions only. This case is a very fine illustra- 
tion of my thesis, inasmuch as it shows the action of the 
principle of Habit, whereby activities at first learned by 
persistent effort have become ideo-motor, so that it is only 
their voluntary performance, and the ability to learn more, 
which are impaired. 

Again there are cases which show a finer application 
still of the law of Habit, in connection with each of the 
functions of voluntary movement. It is impossible to say 
beforehand just how much or how little of what is, as a 
whole, an action learned by imitative effort remains still 
under voluntary control at any time. A great part of any 
one of our habitual actions is regularly under subcortical or 
ideo-motor control, except for inhibitions or unusual exer- 
cises of it. 

We find that speech, for example, is subject to a great 
many finer degrees of impairment. Sentence-making may 
be impossible, while the words taken alone may be spoken. 
Words again may be impossible, while the simple syllabic 
sounds may be quite possible. Certain classes of words, 
as nouns and names, may disappear while other classes of 

1 Brain, VII., 1 891, p. 437. 
2E 



41 8 The Origin of Volition, 

words remain. And finally, all that the patient may be 
capable of is some single oft-repeated sound. 1 In all this 
we see reversed the child's progress from simple imitation 
of sounds, to effortful repetition, then to the co-ordination 
of sounds or syllables into words, then to imitations of 
short sentences which he hears, and finally to spontaneous 
combinations of his own to express his meaning. 

A similar series of facts is found also in agraphia, or 
derangements of writing ; stages in which there are, in 
order, certain defects becoming more and more grave. 
There is trembling handwriting, failure to write sentences, 
when certain words can still be written ; failure to write 
words, while musical notation, or single letters, or both, 
may still be written ; failure to write letters, while figures 2 
may still be written ; failure to write anything except to 
dictation ; 3 and finally, failure to write at all without copies, 
although copies may still be traced. Here is retrogres- 
sion from the highest co-ordination of hand movements, 
down to the tracery imitation already described ; 4 the final 
stage being that in which meaningless scrawls show the 
absence of all central co-ordination. 5 

So in the case of alexia, or impairment of reading ; 
a function which may be destroyed without impairing 
either speech or writing. 6 It may extend to the reading 

1 See Kussmaul, Storungen der Sprache, pp. 9 and 164, and for illustrative 
cases, Revue Philos., Oct. 1892, p. 157 ff. Also Bateman, On Aphasia, p. 75. 
Ribot traces this progress, as a phenomenon of memory, Maladies de la 
Memoire, pp. 132 ff.; cf. Brazier, Revue Philos., Oct. 1892, p. 364. 

2 Case of Dejerine, Mem. Soc. de Biologic, Feb. 27, 1892 ; cf. Brain, 
1893, P- 3i8. 

3 Lichtheim's case, Brain, VII., p. 447. 4 Above, Chap. V. 
6 See Starr's case, Medical Record (N. Y.), XXXIV., 1888, p. 500. 

6 Alexia without agraphia is rare ; but see the remarkable case of Dejerine 
cited in the second note above. Agraphia came on subsequently in conse- 
quence of a second lesion found at the autopsy. 



Special Evidence, 419 

of handwriting only (even the patient's own 1 ) ; or to read- 
ing of music notation only; 2 or to all printing and hand- 
writing except numerical figures ; 3 or to all but draw- 
ings and outlines of objects ; or to all signs except music 
notation ; or, finally, to all interpretation of visual signs ; 
in which case only simple sensations of sight remain, 
and the patient reaches the condition called psychic 
blindness. 4 

Recent observations show a corresponding analysis by 
disease of the faculty of musical expression. The power 
of playing on instruments, or singing by note, may be 
lost, while familiar selections may still be executed from 
memory ; and, when the disease has developed further, an 
air becomes impossible from memory, but may still be exe- 
cuted by the imitation of another's performance. 5 Oppen- 
heim cites the case of a patient who could not sing until 
the words of a familiar song were spoken to him, 6 although 
he could not repeat the words ; and Franckl cites the case 
of a patient with right-sided hemiplegia, agraphia, alexia, 
and aphasia to the extent of echolalia, who yet sang one 
song, but without the words. 7 These last two cases 8 illus- 
trate purely suggestive or automatic singing. 9 

1 Oppenheim, Charite Annalen, XVII. 

2 Ballet, quoted by Wallaschek. 

8 See Glashey's case, Arch, fur Psych., XVI., 1885, p. 661. 

4 Cf. the analysis into five stages of defect in reading, by Weiss enb erg, 
Arch, fiir Psychialrie, XXII., 1891, p. 442. 

5 See Brazier, loc. cit., and Case 3 of Oppenheim, Charite Annalen, XIII., 
1888, p. 354, quoted by Wallaschek, Zeitschrift fur Psychologic, Vol. VI., p. 8. 

fi Loc. cit., XIII., p. 358; cf. also Wallaschek, loc. cit., p. 12. 

7 Franckl-Hoch\vart,Z>(?«/^. Zeitsch.fiir Nervenheilkunde, 1 89 1, 1., p. 287. 

8 See also another of Oppenheim's (a man who could not read, but yet 
sang off correctly a printed musical score), loc. cit., p. 364; and yet another, 
of a boy who sang a song in his eleventh month, before he learned to speak 
(Wallaschek, loc. cit., p. 13). 

9 See my own case above, Chap. VI., § 3 (' Sense Exaltation'}. 



420 The Origin of Volition. 

The connection between speech and music which has 
been spoken of above, 1 may also be serviceable in another 
way. Patients have been reported who could speak only by 
singing the words. In such cases they may be able thus to 
understand the words, 2 or even yet not to understand them. 3 
The latter illustrates the reflex or suggestive movements of 
speech, which may be stimulated through the centre of the 
understanding of music, whether it be visual or auditory. 
Gowers accounts for this latter case by the observation 
that the text, in musical execution, is simply a convenience, 
not an essential, and the meaning of the words is, in 
learning, entirely subordinated to the correct music. 3 It 
is again essential to remark here, — in order to keep 
our argument clearly in view, — that there may be aboulia 
for musical execution, leaving reflex or imitative execution 
intact ; and that in such cases no new musical acquisitions 
can be made. 4 

V. Still another class' of facts may be cited as affording 
evidence in favour of my view of the rise of volition ; the 
facts of brain development, as comparative embryology 

1 Chap. IV., § 2. 

2 Case referred to by Starr, Psycholog. Review, L, 1894, p. 92. 

3 Diseases of the Brain, 1885, p. 122. 

4 The final loss of the imitative function as involved in gesture, general move- 
ment, etc. (so-called amimia ; see Kussmaul, loc. cit., p. 159 ff., and Ballet, loc. 
cit., p. 75), and its amnesic phase need not be dwelt upon. Amimia reduces the 
patient to the stage of pre-imitative suggestion, again confirming the reverse 
parallel between order of acquisition and order of loss. A case recently re- 
ported by Mills in Philada. Hosp. Reports, 1893, brings out the facts clearly. 
A patient, having right hemiplegia and motor aphasia, without word-deafness, 
lost all expression by movements of any kind, except that he uttered ' la-la ' 
over and over, and could still laugh when pleased. The expressive move- 
ments which he retained longest — apart from those mentioned — were the 
' nod ' and ' shake ' of head to signify ' yes ' and ' no.' As we would expect, 
facial expression usually remains intact, even in cases of amimia which in- 
volves all voluntary pantomine, gesture, etc. 



Special Evidence, 421 

and early brain anatomy supply them. Two very general 
questions arise in view of our present topic : we are 
interested to know, first, what kind of motor apparatus 
the child is born with ; and, second, in what order he 
adds to his motor equipment in the way of activities 
which may be described as voluntary. In answer to the 
first question, we may say without hesitation that the 
child begins life without the necessary apparatus for any 
voluntary action whatever. He lacks two very important, 
indeed, essential things : associative connections between 
the lower central organs and the cortex, with all traces of 
medulated nerve fibre ; and, second, his cerebrum has not 
developed the different local centres and their connections 
with one another. So far there is no dispute. 1 

In regard to the second inquiry, — the time and order 
of development of complete activities, — experimental evi- 
dence is largely lacking and anatomical evidence is 
notoriously uncertain. Putting the anatomical evidence, 
however, with that of comparative physiology, we see 
ground to justify us in the position that volition is a 
matter of cortical co-ordination, occurring possibly about 
the sixth to eighth month, after simple imitation has 
become common and varied. It should be borne in mind, 
however, — lest this seem like special pleading, in view of 
the very scanty evidence at hand, — that it is not a ques- 
tion here of what is the true hypothesis, but of what alter- 
natives may be true. 

The main facts now known may be thrown together 
very briefly. Soltmann 2 found that young dogs did not 
respond to stimulation of the cortical motor centres until 

1 Foster, Preyer, Bastian, Soltmann, Meynert. 

2 Jahrbuch fur Kinder heilkunde, IX., 1875, pp. 115 ff. 



422 The Origin of Volition. 

nine days old, i.e., until two days after the eyes were open ; 
then the reaction came first only from the fore paw. The 
same results were shown by looking for laming in the 
dog's movements after extirpation of the motor centres. 
Further, Soltmann, in considering the analogies of struct- 
ure, finds voluntary action in the child beginning from the 
middle to the end of the first quarter-year, and that it 
develops first for the arm, then hand, and last for the leg 
(the dog's hind paw was quite lawless — regellos — in 
its responses to stimulation as late as the sixth month). 
These deductions are accepted by Vierordt. 1 Further, 
Soltmann finds that the child does not get the eyelid- 
touch reflex, which is a cortical reflex, till its seventh or 
eighth week. 

Again, authorities have shown that the composition of 
the brain is not favourable to cortical action until the 
seventh month. The nerve sheath is absent in the brain, 
the quantity of water is very large as compared with 
the later brain condition, 2 the necessary fibres have not 
developed between the motor cortex and the striate bodies 
(Vierordt), and certain cells then undergo changes making 
them comparable to the voluntary cells. 3 Meynert 4 has 
found further lack of preparation in the nerve courses of 
voluntary action in the human infant of four months. As 
to the difference between the young dog and the human 
infant, Ferrier says, in discussing Soltmann's results : 
"The degree of development and control over move- 
ments which a puppy reaches in ten days or a fortnight, 

1 Vierordt's Lehrbuch der Kinderkrankheiten, Bd. I., p. 420. 

2 Wiesbach, Arch, fur Psych., II., III. 

3 Jastrowicz, Parrot {Arch, de Physiologic, I., 530 ff.), Virchow. 

4 Cited by Soltmann, loc. cit. 



Special Evidence. 423 

are not attained by the human infant under a year or 
more." 1 Further, if we suppose that in the child, as in 
the dog, the sight function is the first to develop its con- 
nections sufficiently to stimulate to voluntary action, we 
may fall back upon the researches of Flechsig, showing 
that fibres from the sight centres in the occipital cortex do 
not begin to appear in the child until the second or third 
month. Bernheim quotes Parrot to the effect that the 
nervous apparatus is not entirely ready for voluntary action 
until toward the end of the ninth month. 

However uncertain some of these detailed observations 
and deductions may be, it is nevertheless easy to strike fair 
limits inside of which we may say conclusions are safe. 
Let us say, therefore, all allowances being made for differ- 
ences between man and dog, and for errors of observation, 
that voluntary action in the child arises and develops to 
perfection gradually, in connection with single functions 
separately, between about the fifth and ninth months ; 
that the hand becomes first capable of voluntary use, and 
that its use occurs first in connection with stimulation 
through the eye. 

Even with this very modest outcome, we find several 
interesting side-lights upon our results already arrived at 
in earlier connections. 

1. Volition seems to come about the time of advent of 
suggestive reactions of the direct imitative kind. 

2. It arises first in connection with the sight-hand- 
movement reaction, a result which we have already had 
reason to anticipate. This seems to give some justifica- 
tion both to the use of the hand in connection with eye 
stimulations of colour, etc., in the * dynamogenic method ' 

1 Functions of the Brain, 2d edition, p. 364. 



424 The Origin of Volition. 

of study which we have been pursuing, and also to the 
view that sight (with hearing) go ahead of the other 
senses in stimulating to the higher co-ordinating processes 
of the organism. This means, in my jargon, that they are 
the avenues of greatest progress and attainment in the 
' circular ' form of reaction, the ' organic imitation,' by 
which accommodation comes about. So it is no accident 
that they are the most imitative of the senses, when imita- 
tion becomes conscious. 

3. It is interesting to note that we found that the ten- 
dency to use the right hand more than the left began 
(allowing for the differences in children) about the sixth 
to the eighth month. Comparing this with the result 
given above, that the arm gets ready for voluntary use 
before any other member, and about the seventh month, it 
seems possible to surmise that one motor arm centre gets 
started before the other, and more vigorously, in its prep- 
aration for voluntary action ; and that the use of the right 
hand in preference to the left is evidence, at this first 
stage, of just this preparation going on in the left hemi- 
sphere. As the speech function follows this up pretty 
closely, beginning to be slightly voluntary in the shape of 
verbal imitations about the eighth or ninth month, the 
idea we had earlier, that voluntary speech proceeds upon 
an earlier predominant dextral function, gets, at any rate, 
no contradiction. 1 

1 It is interesting to find that both Soltmann found with young dogs and 
v. Gudden with a young rabbit, that the motor centre of one hemisphere may 
control both the right and the left limb in the first two months or more. 
Soltmann kept a young dog alive a number of weeks after its left fore leg 
centre had been removed, and succeeded in getting movements of both the 
fore paws by stimulating the proper centre in the right hemisphere. Such 
double contraction from stimulating one side failed, with a grown dog, as it 
commonly does in other instances. Soltmann, loc. cit., pp. 1 28-131. 



Special Evidence. 425 

VI. I need not take much space to point out, as a 
final piece of evidence, that the hypnotic condition shows 
a line drawn, in a most unmistakable way, just between 
imitation which is suggestion under the reign of habit, 
and imitation which involves accommodation and volition. 
The theory of hypnotism now most widely current, under 
the name of the ' suggestion theory,' amounts to a direct 
recognition of the fact that the somnambule is an abnor- 
mally good imitator. Spontaneity, synthesis, self-direc- 
tion, these are gone; but these are volition. The 
somnambule never learns anything new. He is always 
satisfied with what he imitates. His critical attitudes, his 
criteria of belief, are all taken from him. The careful 
examination of the facts of hypnosis, with the view of 
volition now advanced, in mind, will convince any one, I 
think, that the line of division between suggestion and 
volition is where I have placed it. 

But the limits of the somnambule's suggestibility show 
the way out of his dilemma very plainly ; the way nature 
has actually taken in the development of the child and 
in the series of animal forms. Whenever the suggested 
course comes into hard collision with the root-habits, 
sentiments, realities, of his nature, — his modesty, his 
veracity, his self-interests, — then he gets aroused to a 
kind of hesitation. He delays, avoids, perhaps refuses 
to act upon the suggestion. This reproduces exactly the 
condition in the child's consciousness which I have called 
* deliberative suggestion.' 1 The child has to reconcile 
seeming irreconcilables, to violate his nature sometimes. 
And it is just in the stress of such issues among the 
suggestive influences that move him, that he gets the 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 3. 



426 The Origin of Volition. 

higher form of conscious plurality of motives which his 
volition goes out to unite in one. 



§ 5. Variations in the Rise of Volition, due to Phylogenesis. 

It is now time to ask whether the requisites to volition 
in the child may arise in another way than by the imitation 
of external movements, sounds, etc. 

We find present, indeed, in the child certain hereditary 
tendencies which have arisen in the process of develop- 
ment — tendencies to act in certain ways, to pursue certain 
classes of objects, to be satisfied with certain gratifications, 
and to urge himself toward them. The case of volition 
is not narrowed down, as would seem to be the case in the 
typical instance figured above, 1 which seems in effect to 
make the child ready for all suggestions which come, and 
equally ready for all. On the contrary, he has appetites, 
instincts, impulses ; and it would not be surprising if we 
should find that these may precipitate him before the time 
into a certain unready choice or a certain conflict of 
choices. 

Moreover, the principle of ' organic imitation ' has shown 
us that the rise of memory and imagination is the direct 
outcome of the need which confronts the organism of 
meeting its stimulations half-way : the organism comes to 
reinstate within consciousness, on occasion, through the 
development of its central cortical processes, certain ele- 
ments which we call memories, pictures, thoughts, without 
waiting for the stimulations outside. If it be true that 
memories and imaginations differ from perceptions only in 
the fact that they are 'away' from external nature and 

1 Fig. XIV., p. 377. 



Variations in the Rise of Volition. 427 

not dependent upon its present objects, then why may not 
all the motor consequences which were at first associated 
with the objects follow from the images simply ? 

If we put these two things together, namely, organized 
habits of action in particular ways, and the motor force of 
memories as prompting, by their dynamogenic influence, to 
the repetition of the reactions with which they themselves 
are joined — then we have the possibility of volition with- 
out overt imitation of external events, and possibly earlier 
than the time of the first such imitations. 

In certain instances clearly present in children, the facts 
are simple, and show three cases: either, first, the child 
simply remembers something and aims to imitate it ; or, 
second, the synthesis or co-ordination demanded for volition 
is really present, as our scheme in Fig. XIV. demands, but 
one of the motor tendencies involved is a special native 
tendency. Its stimulus is organic. And when, therefore, a 
new stimulus comes to excite a movement in conflict with 
the one prescribed by nature, then comes all the com- 
plexity of volition. A subtle inner controversy arises and 
the child has to settle it, quite subconsciously perhaps, by 
a choice which is voluntary. Or third, both, all, the ten- 
dencies may be native, but one of them modified by 
experience, reflection, etc., in a partial conflict with oth- 
ers, so that effort arises in the solution of the case for 
action. 

The first case may be illustrated by any volition aimed at 
a memory, and bringing out the movement which reinstates 
the sensations which the memory stands for. My child 
persistently reaching for a colour and then moving nearer 
to get it, illustrates this case ; or H. dragging a table-cloth 
in her seventh month to bring my bunch of keys within 



428 The Origin of Volition. 

reach. She remembers the movements necessary and 
makes them voluntarily for an end — movements she had 
before found out by accident, or had seen some one else 
make. She strives to reproduce the sensations of move- 
ment and with them the touch of the keys by just the cir- 
cular process of imitation, except that it starts in the 
memory centre instead of in eye or ear. 

The second case has interesting illustrations too : a 
conflict brought about between a native impelling instinct 
on one hand, and a suggested course on the other. Many 
direct modifications of instinct arise in this way, the inhi- 
bition of sobbing and crying, the self-denial of not reaching 
for attractive things, all responses, to parent or companion, 
which conflict with spontaneous tendency, and then con- 
sciously master it. These are voluntary, in the transition 
sense, just in as far as there is motor duality, or contrast, 
resolved into a motor unity, which effects a repetition of 
the one reaction or the other. 

And still more deep-going is the third class of these 
so-called, in our developmental phraseology, ' phylogenetic 
imitations,' which show the clash of nature against itself. 
We have seen the lower form of it in 'deliberative sugges- 
tion ' ; 1 suggestion locking horns with suggestion, and then 
— the outcome, to tell us which is victorious. A corre- 
sponding state of things occurs on a higher scale, at the 
cortical level, when we feel so strongly two ideal courses, 
and consent to one of them, by seeming to ourselves not 
to choose it at all. It simply chooses itself, and we stand 
and wonder. So the child often acts voluntarily when it 
is practically blind to pros and cons, when the whole 
complex condition is made up of elements so character- 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 3. 



Variations in the Rise of Volition. 429 

istic and strenuous for utterance, that allowance or recog- 
nition is all he has to do. The child's early moral 
decisions are of this kind, I think. The ought, the right, 
simply represent a growing habit, his nature coming to 
feel what it ought to be by what it is getting to be, in 
the midst of crying imperative appetites and sugges- 
tions. He acts voluntarily for the right, let us say ; but 
who can say that his choice is in any intimate sense 
his own ? 

It is interesting to note, further, under this head, an 
instance of what is to be spoken of again as the 'inter- 
action of habit and accommodation. ' We find volition 
brought out on occasion of imitation, a higher kind of 
imitation called 'persistent,' in which the child does not 
rest content with the degree of success his old reactions 
provide, but aims ' to try again ' for better things. Now 
the imitative instinct itself is thus, in this transition, 
brought to the bar, and violated by its own passage into 
volition. In volition, the agency of the actor comes to 
instruct him. He learns his power to resist and to con- 
quer, as well as his weakness and subjection to a copy. 
And the child comes, just in this conflict between imita- 
tion, an instinct, and suggestion, an innovation, to break 
through and make himself an inventor, and a free agent. 
In fact, we have found a type of action realized in the 
phrase ' contrary ' or ' wayward ' suggestion, in which just 
this revolt becomes a way of action. The boy wont imi- 
tate. This simply means that he won't imitate what other 
people ask him to, but prefers to imitate what he asks him- 
self to. He imitates just the same, of course. But the 
difference is world wide. A ' contrary ' boy has learned 
the lesson of volition, has passed from suggestion to con- 



430 The Origin of Volition, 

duct, has mounted from the second to the third level, and 
is available for genius-material. 1 

I have said enough now to show that the rise of volition 
is but another illustration of the one law of motor develop- 
ment. It is the form which the process of accommodation 
takes on when the central processes become complex. 

1 The great question of invention vs. imitation — how can any one be 
original if even volition and thought be imitative functions ? — this comes up 
in my later volume. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

The Mechanism of Revival : Internal Speech 
and Song. 

The facts of memory and imagination now broadly dis- 
cussed, are capable of closer description, when we come 
to the analysis of consciousness itself. Each function 
which has its external habit-aspect in the action of the 
person, has also its internal habit-aspect in the movements 
among the elements of content in the mind, which go to 
make up our ' stream of thought.' A ' cross-section ' of 
the stream at any moment will contain the elements in 
consciousness which stand for the activities going on, or 
tending to go on, in the bodily mechanism. And each 
such element must have its reason for being in the laws of 
assimilation, association, and thought, already briefly put 
in evidence. 

I shall attempt to show this in more detail by analyzing 
two so-called ' expressive' functions, both of which are most 
interesting in themselves, and both of which have had 
great light thrown upon them in later years : speech and 
song. The aim shall be, not to give detailed descriptions 
of the execution of speech and music, but to show what is 
actually in consciousness at the time of any such execution, 
and how just this came to be in consciousness. 

431 



432 The Mechanism of Revival. 

§ i. Internal Speech. 

An important advance has been made in late years in 
the purely psychological doctrine of memory and imagina- 
tion. The old psychology held that all individuals were 
alike as regards the brain centres for the memory of par- 
ticular things and for the performance of particular actions. 
It has been shown, however, by pathological cases and by 
analysis as well, that we are not alike. Several distinct 
so-called ' types ' have been discovered — persons who de- 
pend mainly on one sense for their memories, and on the 
memories of this sense mainly for the necessary release of 
voluntary energy into the muscular combinations used in 
performing particular actions. The analysis of the speech 
function has been so brilliant, that I may explain it more in 
detail, as illustrating the general principle of ' types,' upon 
which, as I think, the true theory of the rise and develop- 
ment of attention must be based. 

The doctrine of brain function in speech is now pretty 
clear — thanks to the teaching, principally, of pathological 
cases. Normal speech is a function which probably in- 
volves several so-called * brain centres,' all in dynamic con- 
nection with one another. Given a man with the physical 
apparatus of the act of speaking intact — vocal organs, 
nerve connections, and brain seat of discharge (Broca's 
gyre) — and ask why such a man speaks, the answer may 
take several forms. He may name a word sign which he 
has seen, or repeat a word sound which he has heard, or tell 
the words he has written, or finally, he may speak a word 
simply from the habit of speaking it — from the tendency 
of his speech apparatus to operate as it has operated 
before. Now we ordinarily generalize this diversity in the 



Internal Speech. 433 

case in which the man ' thinks ' the word merely, without 
speaking it, by saying that the word is ' in his mind,' 
internal, interieur ; but the question is : What is in his 
mind ? — the printed word (visual image), the spoken word 
(auditory), the written word (hand-motor), the articulate 
word (speech-motor) — is it all of these? Is it any of 
them ? 

If we agree to call the motor centre for speech (nip of 
Fig. XVII. b, p. 413) the * intrinsic ' seat of stimulation to 
the organs of speech, and, on the other hand, to call the 
other centres pointed out ' extrinsic,' the question now 
current runs : Are these extrinsic centres capable, each for 
itself, of arousing the speech centre ; or does one of them, 
the centre for sensations and memories of actual move- 
ment, the ' kinesthetic ' word centre (mc, of the same 
figure), always stand between the motor seat and the other 
sensory centres ? 

Or, put psychologically, do we, when we remember 
words and speak them, always recall them in terms of the 
sensations of movement involved in speaking or writing 
them ; or is it possible to speak simply from remembering 
the visual form of the word, or its sound ? Is the kines- 
thetic centre, with the memories of movement to which 
its processes correspond, intrinsic or extrinsic ? 

The view that verbal memories are always motor, or 
kinesthetic, is associated with the name of Strieker. 1 
Recent results have refuted Strieker. A variety of facts 
have been adduced to show that the function of speech is 
not dependent in all cases upon the possibility of reinstating 

1 Strieker, Ueber die Bewegungsvorstellungen, Ueber die Association der 
Vorstellungen, Ueber die Sprachvorstellungen, Langage et Musique. See also 
G. E. Muller, Grundlegung der Psychophysik. 

2 F 



434 The. Mechanism of Revival. 

motor experiences; although in some cases it is, for patients 
are reported who could not speak unless they first traced 
the words with hand or pen. 1 Many of these facts are 
already common property ; but a few of the latest points 
on this side of the discussion are these: (i) Cases are 
cited of verbal hallucination, in which the patient hears 
two or more voices, one of which he takes to be his 
own, the other that of some one else ; only the former can 
be accounted for as due to the incipient stimulation of his 
own speech centres, the other is probably auditory. 2 This 
interpretation is supported by the interesting fact, estab- 
lished by Pierre Janet, that some patients can themselves 
speak during their verbal hallucinations, while others can- 
not. Again, only of the latter class must we hold that 
the motor memories are necessary to speech. 3 Indeed, 
there is a characteristic difference between the two classes, 
— a difference first pointed out, it seems, by Baillarger — 
i.e. f with those patients who are able to speak without 
interrupting the voice which they hear, we have a halluci- 
nation of objective speech : they hear what they think is a 
real voice outside them. While the other class have a 
hallucination of internal speech. They declare that there 
is some one inside them, speaking to them. Seglas holds, 
with evident truth, that these latter hallucinations are 
' psycho-motor ' 4 in their seat, while the ' objective' kind 

1 See Sommer's report on the so-called Grashey case — a patient named 
Voit — in Zeitsch. fur Psychologies II., heft 3, p. 158, and the citations of 
Pick, same journal, III., heft 1, p. 50. 

2 See case of Charcot quoted by Ballet, Le langage interieur, p. 64, also 
cases in Seglas, Les troubles du langage chez les alienes, p. 126. 

3 Cf. Revue Philosophique, November, 1892, p. 520, and Seglas, loc. cit., 
p. 117 and p. 145. A case is reported of a patient who could stop his internal 
voice by holding his breath (Annales Psychol., January, 1893, P- io 3)« 

4 Seglas, loc. cit., p. 147; Janet, loc. cit., who advocates the expression 



Internal Speech. 435 

are auditory. (2) There are cases of motor aphasia due 
to impairment of hearing, the motor centres being intact, 
i.e., cases of auditory verbal amnesic aphasia. 1 (3) We 
recognize and understand words which we are unable to 
pronounce, and which we have never written ; this recog- 
nition must be by aid of visual or auditory images. The 
part played by the visual and motor memories respectively, 
in my own case, is seen in the fact that when I wish to 
speak in any language but English, the German words 
come first into my mind ; but when I sit down to write in 
a foreign language, French words invariably present them- 
selves. This means that my German is speech-motor and 
auditory, having been learned conversationally in Germany, 
while the French, which was acquired in school by reading 
and exercise-writing, is visual and hand-motor. 2 It is 
interesting also to note the joyous recognition which young 
children show, when they speak a new vowel or consonant 
sound correctly. The memory of the correct sound can- 
not, in this case evidently, be from the motor centres. 3 
(4) There is evidence of direct functional connection be- 

' kinesthetic verbal ' instead of ' psycho-motor,' as applying to this hallu- 
cination of internal speech. 

1 See cases collected by Ballet, he. cit., pp. 91-92; also Bastian's case, 
Brain as Organ of Mind, p. 642; cf. also Paulhan, Revue Philosophique, 
XXL, pp. 37 ff. 

2 A similar case, apart from details, is reported by Ballet, he. eit., p. 62. 

3 At the risk of too much personality (of which, however, the literature of 
this topic is necessarily full), I may quote the following about my two-year-old 
child H., written in a letter by her aunt, who was far from intending it as a 
psychological observation or for publication : " She rejoices greatly when she 
succeeds in sounding a new letter. The other day she achieved /, and went 
about telling everybody, ' Baby can say sleep and slipper.' This morning I 
am informed that she can say 'save ' and 'give ' (letter v). She notices at 
once herself, when she can pronounce the word as the rest of us do — no one 
tells her." 



436 The Mechanism of Revival. 

tween the visual and auditory seats and the centre of 
motor discharge. Here I may best give the words of 
Janet, who writes in view of the pathological evidence : 
" This hypothesis is confirmed by investigations on anaes- 
thetic hysterics. In my opinion, it is impossible to explain 
the fact that these persons preserve their power of move- 
ment intact, in spite of the absolute loss of kinesthetic 
sensations and images, unless we admit that movement 
may be directly stimulated by visual and auditory pictures. 
There are individuals with whom the auditory image of 
a word suffices for its pronunciation." 1 (5) The law of 
'dynamogenesis,' in accordance with which every sensory 
stimulation tends to bring about a motor discharge, indi- 
cates such a direct connection in cases of closely associated 
function. Fere demonstrates that speaking makes the 
hand-grasp stronger, that seeing colours and hearing sounds 
influence the motor centres ; so it is altogether probable 
that stimulations of sight and hearing react directly to 
stimulate the motor speech centres. 2 (6) Cases may be 
cited of direct antagonism between memories of words 
and the sensations produced by the speech movements 
which they stimulate. The pathological state called para- 
phasia 3 is duplicated sometimes temporarily in cases of 
severe head-ache; one intends to mention one object 
(chair) and really speaks another (spoon), without detecting 

1 Pierre Janet, Automatisme Psychologique, p. 60. The common cases of 
patients who can copy, when they .cannot initiate writing and speech, are in 
evidence. 

2 Fere cites his results in support of Strieker's contention; see his Sensa- 
tion et Mouvement. He fails, however, to distinguish between the direct 
motor effect of a sensation, and the round-about motor effect — i.e., through 
the kinesthetic centre, or via the motor correlations which the attention re- 
quires — which latter is required by Strieker's view. 

8 Cf. Bastian's cases of ' incoordinate amnesia,' Brain as Organ of Mind, 
pp. 634-638. 



Internal Speech. 437 

the mistake. I have myself had this experience ; being 
quite unable to name correctly an object seen, until some 
one else has spoken the word with emphasis — yet all the 
while allowing my own incorrect word to pass, and 
feeling astonishment that others have not understood my 
meaning. Similar are those cases in which patients take 
their own words for those of some one else, declaring, 
when questioned, that they themselves did not speak 
them. 1 Reflection leads us to the view that in these 
cases there is a direct flow from the auditory or visual 
centre to the motor speech centre, the kinesthetic speech 
centre being, perhaps, temporarily inhibited. The same 
kind of antagonism is also seen, from the other side, when 
there is ' exaltation ' of the kinesthetic centre, or what is 
called uncontrollable 'verbal impulse.' The patient speaks 
certain words or phrases in spite of himself — against his 
utmost effort to speak something else. 2 

This conception of the case — not to dwell upon other 
points of evidence 3 — seems to harmonize well with the 

1 See Seglas' very interesting cases, loc. cit., pp. 150 f. 

2 See Seglas on ' hysterical mutism,' loc. cit., pp. 97 f. In dreams this is 
probably the case : the kinesthetic centres are no longer inhibited, and we 
talk meaningless sounds, which in our dream consciousness are interpreted as 
rational discourse. In view of all such cases of antagonism, I suggested in an 
earlier statement of the main considerations on this point (Philos. Review, II., 
1893, p. 389), that a distinction was legitimate between psychic and cortical 
dumbness, corresponding to the current distinction on the sensory side. Just 
as there is a distinction between being unable to hear words (cortical deafness), 
and being unable to understand the meanings of words we hear (psychic deaf- 
ness), so there is a distinction, shown pathologically, between being unable to 
speak words, and being unable to speak the words we mean. Put in different 
terminology, the former case would be due to a lesion of the motor elements 
at the * second level,' and the latter case to a lesion of the motor connections 
between the second and the cortical or ' third level.' Compare the allusions 
made to these differences above, Chap. XIII., § 3, p. 408. 

8 For instance, cf. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie, I., pp. 160 ff. Further evidence 
accrues, also, from the consideration of tune memories, which seem to be 



438 The Mechanism of Revival. 

doctrine of nervous function now becoming more and more 
current. According to this doctrine, the brain is a series 
of centres of relatively stable dynamic tension ; the various 
associative connections among these centres are paths of 
less and more, rather than of least and most y resistance ; 
that the range of alternative adjustments is excessively 
wide; and, consequently, that any individual has his 'per- 
sonal equation ' in all functions as complex as that of 
speech. One man is a ' motor,' another a ■ visual,' a third 
an ' auditive,' according as one or another of the extrinsic 
sources of stimulation suffices to release the necessary 
energy into his motor speech centre. No one doubts 
Strieker, therefore, when he says that he remembers words 
only by means of sensations of incipient movement ; but 
for the same reason we cannot dispute the claim of Stumpf, 
and Wernicke, and Kussmaul, and Lichtheim, that audi- 
tory and visual images may, in other cases, play an equally 
leading role. 

§ 2. Internal Song: How do We think of Tunes? 

The question of 'internal song' is a new one. What 
do we mean when we say that a ' tune is running in our 
head ' ? What sort of images are really in consciousness 
then ? 

The factors involved are evidently less complex than 
those already shown to be involved in speech memory, in 
the discussion in the preceding paragraph, 1 at the same 
time that the entire phenomenon is more obscure. Evi- 

independent, in many adults, and generally in children, of the singing or 
playing of the tunes. Cf. above, Chap. VI., § 5, and the next section of this 
chapter. 

1 See also Chap. XV., § 3. 



Internal Song. 439 

dence goes to show that the internal tune is almost entirely- 
auditory : that is, that the auditory centre is intrinsic to 
musical reproduction. 

An adequate discussion of the nature of tune reproduc- 
tion should provide a theory of tune perception which 
takes account of three factors — pitch, time or rhythm, 
timbre — and possibly of a fourth character, ordinarily- 
designated by the phrase ' musical expression' or, more 
properly, emotional tone. 1 

There are certain interesting points of relationship 
between the process of internal speech and that of ' inter- 
nal' or remembered music. For example, many persons 
find internal tunes generally fuller, more real, and some- 
times only tunes at all when vocal movements are involved ; 
either, that is, when they remember the appropriate words, 
when they have sung the words to the tune, or when they 
have hummed the refrain aloud. Here there is clearly a 
motor type of music performers. But this motor require- 
ment is extremely variable. In some cases the tune must 
be associated with a particular instrument, and this is done 
only by the reproduction of the proper sensations in the 
finger tips, lips, etc., used in playing that instrument. On 

1 There is not a great deal of literature on this topic ; see the following 
titles: Egger, La parole interieure ; Strieker, Langage et musique ; Stumpf, 
Tonpsychologie, I., pp. 135 ff.; Wallaschek, Viertdjahrschrift fur Musik- 
wissenschaft, 1 89 1, heft I, and die Bedeutung der Aphasia fur die Musik- 
vorstellung, Zeitsch fur Psychol., VI., heft I, and his review of my theory in 
the same journal, VII., heft I ; Wallaschek has a popular article also in the 
Contemporary Review, September, 1894; Lotze, Medicinische Psychologies 
p. 480; G. E. Miiller, Grundlegung der Psychophysik, p. 288; v. Franckl- 
Hochwart, Ueber den Verlust des musikalischen Ausdrucksvermogens in 
Deutsche Zeitschrift filr Nervenheilkundc, 1891, I., pp. 283-291; Oppenheim, 
Charite Annalen, XIII. , 1 888, 345-383 ; besides the voluminous literature of 
aphasia. An interesting late article, full of bibliographical references, is by 
Brazier, Revue Philosophique, October, 1892, p. 337. 



44-0 The Mechanism of Revival. 

the other hand, there are facts which show that the motor 
type is only a type, and that even in these cases auditory 
tune memories are necessary. Musical recognition in 
childhood often precedes verbal recognition. Musical 
expression usually precedes verbal expression, both when 
there is a clearly inherited musical tendency, 1 and in 
ordinary imitative reactions. 2 In cases of ' absolute hear- 
ing,' discussed below, we have apparently recognition of 
pitch without any motor speech or song images. Further, 
there is the critical fact that motor aphasia, and even 
verbal deafness, may exist with no impairment of the 
musical faculty — no amusia, as defects of musical faculty 
are called by Brazier. This is true both for musical recog- 
nition (case of Wernicke), and for musical expression. 3 
Cases show, however, that the latter, musical expression, 
is never lost, without involving speech ; although musical 
recognition seems sometimes, as in Carpenter's case and 
in Brazier's cases of musical amnesia, to be lost without 
impairing speech. 4 The conclusion that musical repro- 
duction is auditory is supported also by such facts as the 
following: that we often recognize an air after hearing 
it once, even when we have never tried to sing it, and 
could not if we tried ; that in singing or humming a tune, 
we know that we are wrong even when we are unable to 
correct it ; tune hallucinations are reported without words 

1 Interesting cases are cited by Ballet, loc. cit., p. 24. 

2 My child E. imitated a run of three notes, vocally, before she showed any 
verbal imitations. 

3 Cf. v. Franckl-Hochwart, loc. cit., I., p. 283. 

4 Wallaschek, Zt. f. Psych., VII., March, 1893, p. 671, in criticising this 
statement of mine, cites cases of musical inability through stage-fright, while 
speech remains, as possible exceptions. I think, however, that stage-fright is 
such an emotional and interested thing that the inability is not really musical 
at all, but is rather due to general nervous inhibition. 



Internal Song. 441 

or vocal quality, and illusions of tunes may be started by 
accidental sounds ; 1 many persons are able to remember 
and recall musical chords and combinations which it is 
impossible for the human voice to reproduce, i.e., we can 
mentally depict harmony ; further, there are cases of per- 
sons who can recognize the pitch of tones from instru- 
ments, but not that of the tones of their own voice. 2 It 
seems clear, indeed, on the surface, that of the elements 
distinguished above as essential to musical reproduction 
— pitch, rhythm, timbre, and emotional tone — the most 
essential, pitch, finds no adequate basis in motor speech 
or song memories. The range of intonation in speaking 
and singing is too narrow to supply the material for 
musical reproduction, although there are, no doubt, indi- 
viduals whose musical capacity — especially of expression 
— is confined to these limits. 

It is probable, accordingly, that there is a brain-centre 
for tune memories — a centre whose impairment produces 
so-called notal amnsia — that this centre is a part, in func- 
tion, at least, if not anatomically, of the auditory centre, 
and that cases will occur of partial amusia in different per- 
sons, due to the degree in which this function involves 
others. 3 This general conclusion is confirmed, I think, 

1 Ordinary internal tunes are usually stimulated in this way, as I have said 
above, Chap. VI., § 5. 

2 Cases of v. Kries cited below. 

3 For example, musical deafness without verbal deafness; case of Grant 
Allen in Mind, III., p. 157, and that of Brazier, loc. cit., p. 359. Bastian, 
loc. cit., p. 664, quotes a case from Lasegue of an aphasic musician, who 
could write nothing but passages of music which he had just heard. A recent 
case of Pick's {Arch, fiir Psych., 1892, p. 910) seems at first sight to give 
trouble, i.e., a case of loss of musical recognition with no impairment of musical 
expression. Yet Pick's location of the lesion as subcortical sufficiently accords 
with the view in my text. The seat of auditory attention was not injured. 
Cf. note on Pick's position, and the theory of ' muscular control,' below 
Chap. XV., § 4. 



44 2 The Mechanism of Revival. 

by what follows on pitch memory, the only one of the four 
elements of musical reproduction which is in order here. 



§ 3. Pitch Recognition. 

The recognition of the pitch of notes gives two cases 
apparently distinct from each other, i.e., ' relative' and 
' absolute ' pitch recognition. In relative recognition the 
musical interval seems to supply the real locus of the recog- 
nition. Given the initial note and the proper rhythm — 
and the rest of the tune comes up by reason of the asso- 
ciated tone intervals, note by note. It is the case of 
objective recognition by assimilation of content, as already 
described. 1 Comparatively few persons lack the ability to 
carry through a familiar tune mentally. Absolute recog- 
nition, on the other hand, is a different accomplishment ; 
even among competent musicians it is often 2 conspicu- 
ously absent. It is the power of reproducing a note of 
any desired pitch absolutely from memory. 

The auditory character of all relative pitch recognition 
is shown by the following facts — in addition to the general 
considerations already adduced: (1) Brazier 3 cites cases 
of aphasic patients who could speak words only by singing 
them : that is, they must first recognize an air, and then 
arouse the motor speech function from that cue. The 
motor centre not being available in these cases, it is diffi- 
cult to see on what but auditory grounds the tune recogni- 
tion could proceed. It often occurs, in my own case, that 
I cannot recall the words of a song until I get the tune 

1 Chap, x., § 3. 

2 In the case of some of those who carry tuning-forks in their pockets. 
8 Loc. cit.y p. 366. 



Pitch Recognition, 443 

started. Another case of this kind is cited immediately 
below. (2) I find it possible, with Paulhan, 1 to think dif- 
ferent notes very clearly while the vocal organs are held 
rigid. I am able to think one note while I am uttering 
aloud a long-drawn-out vocal sound, say a, in a different 
pitch. And lest it may be said that it is the overtones 
which are heard internally in this case, I may add, that I 
am able with the greatest ease to hold aloud an a sound at 
c', say, and at the same time to cause a whole tune — say 
Yankee-doodle — to run its course 'in my ear.' Strieker's 
inability to think one consonant while speaking another is 
due, probably, to the fact that, in uttering labials, etc., 
pronounced and explosive muscular combinations are 
necessary, and that they have no clear auditory character, 
being usually merged in accompanying vowel sounds. 
(3) My internal tunes have very decided pitch — deter- 
mined upon an instrument in a number of cases. Yet, as 
I have said above, 2 it is not always the normal pitch of the 
tune as written and learned, nor is it constant for recur- 
rences of the same tune. 

In explaining pitch recognition the question of relative 
pitch comes first. The very fact that it is relative, means 
that it may be brought under the law of objective conscious 
recognition in general. If recognition be due to assim- 
ilation, relationship, 'fringe,' in the representation recog- 
nized, and vary with the degree of this associative or 
apperceptive element, then recognition of each note would 
occur, like the recognition of any other presented content, 
according as it have or have not a train or fringe of asso- 
ciated elements. A tune is then recognized, because it is 
such a train. The degree of precision in its recognition 

1 Loc. cit. 2 chap. VI., § 5. 



444 The Mechanism of Revival. 

depends upon the fineness of discrimination at the original 
hearing of it. So also the fact that notes are better recog- 
nized after the musical notation has been learned, simply 
means that additional elements are brought into the com- 
plex by the notation — elements which support the claim 
of the whole. With persons of the motor type, further, 
the motor speech and song images are prominent in this 
complex, and so essential, in some cases, that recognition 
does not occur without them. It seems likely, therefore, 
that if we grant differences of pitch in tone sensations, the 
recognition of the associated trains which we call ' tunes ' 
is but an instance of a broader mental phenomenon. 

Absolute recognition, on the other hand, or * absolute 
hearing,' as it is called, presents anomalies which make it 
difficult to explain it as an ordinary case of recognition by 
presented association. Either we must find elements of 
complexity in such tones or confess that here is an excep- 
tion to the accepted theory. I have already given the gen- 
eral principles by which this case is to be explained : but 
it may be well to apply them now to a concrete instance. 1 
The question which may be asked, is this : Can any one 
identify a note of any pitch simply and only from the 
tone-quality of the note itself ? 

One of the latest contributions to this question is from 
v. Kries, 2 who is himself a musician. He possesses the 
so-called absolute hearing. He also publishes details 
supplied from other similar cases. He argues that the 
ability to identify a single isolated note cannot be due 
to musical practice, i.e., cannot be a refinement of in- 

1 See above, Chap. X., § 3. 

2 Das absolute Gekor, in Zeitschrift fiir Psychologie und Physiologie der Sin- 
nesorgane, III., 1892, p. 257. 



Pitch Recognition, 445 

terval recognition, 1 because (1) he has had this power 
from early boyhood, as also have others whom he cites ; 
(2) some of the most celebrated musicians have not 
been able to acquire it at all, although their sense of inter- 
val became wonderfully acute ; and (3) the power in him- 
self and others varies with the instrument which sounds 
the note, and is not best with the instruments used most. 
He recognizes notes from the piano best, from string and 
wind instruments, especially the violin, but not those from 
tuning-forks, or steam and other whistles, or notes sung or 
whistled with the lips — a state of things shown with some 
variations also in several of his correspondents. Now the 
violin is with v. Kries a late accomplishment, while he has, 
of course, been hearing singing all his life, accompanying 
singers on the piano from his twelfth year, and whistling 
habitually. Indeed, these last facts — showing the influ- 
ence of timbre on pitch recognition — lead him to deny 
that there are any revived images of any kind belonging 
intrinsically to musical recognition. He finds it to be a 
case of the ' association by naming ' as established by Leh- 
mann ; that is, v. Kries was not able to recognize notes 
until after, in boyhood, he had learned their names and 
written signs. The case is analogous, therefore, he holds, 
to the recognitions which Lehmann found to follow from 
the simple lettering and naming of shades of wool not 
before separately recognized. 

This conclusion of v. Kries is lame, I think. It does 
not account for the differences due to timbre mentioned 
above; for the notation is the same practically for all 
the instruments and for the voice, v. Kries admits this, 
and says it remains for the future to provide a theory of 

1 So Stumpf, loc. cit. t I., p. 280. 



446 The Mechanism of Revival. 

this influence due to timbre — leaning, however, as he 
does, to the overtone theory. Further, he agrees with 
other observers in finding that chords are better recognized 
than single notes ; this would indicate that recognition is 
due in some way to the complexity and variety of the tone 
content, rather than to the accident of naming. It is pos- 
sible, perhaps, to give due weight to the influence of the 
name association in a theory which does more justice to 
the essential facts. This and other cases of the recognition 
of apparently isolated sense qualities can be brought, I 
think, under the law of ' sensori-motor association ' already 
formulated, according to which the recognition is due 
simply to the modification of the a element in my formula 1 
of attention, i.e., to the relative ease of adjustment of the 
attention, to one particular tone-pitch as such. 

Several considerations may be urged in favour of this 
view : (i) It brings absolute and relative tone recognition 
under a single principle ; the former arises on the motor 
side, the latter on the sensory, or assimilative side, of the 
one process ; (2) it accounts for the greater relative ease 
of recognition of chords and compound tones ; apart 
from their complexity of content, they carry greater and 
more varied dynamogenic influence ; (3) it makes it pos- 
sible to consider tone recognition in some cases hereditary, 
as the facts (i.e., cases of v. Kries and others) seem to 
require ; persons have from birth a tendency to give the 
attention with greater facility to one class of stimulations 
than to another — so the doctrine of types teaches. Why 
may not this difference extend also to different notes? 

1 Above, Chap. X., § 3. Instead of Hoffding's sentence {Phil. Stud., VIII., 
p. 90), ' die organische Functionen gehen leichter'' in absolute recognition, I 
should say, the psycho-physical function of attention * goes easier.' 



Pitch Recognition. 447 

The analysis given above of the speech function leads us 
to see what refinements are possible in the recognition of 
words. Even the recognition of particular classes of words, 
as nouns, may be lost while other words are correctly 
used. Brazier cites a case in which the visual time nota- 
tion of written music was retained while the pitch notation 
in the same music was lost. A corresponding native re- 
finement on the motor side, i.e., in the attention, is all that 
this theory requires, and if it is not now evident that such 
refinement exists, a great deal of this book has been writ- 
ten in vain. Refinements on the sensory side, as seen in 
association, are dependent, indeed, upon refinements on the 
motor side. The variations in motor reactions are the win- 
nowing, selecting agents of all mental progress ; (4) it 
enables us to explain the apparent influence of timbre, a fact 
not explained by any other theory. The fact that isolated 
tones from some instruments are recognized, while from 
others they are not, I hold to arise from differences in the 
type of attention exerted in the several cases respectively. 
A ' visual' musician is most likely to recognize tones from 
instruments whose manipulation or notation involves much 
visual attention; an ' auditive,' notes from those which 
exercise hearing in most varied and exclusive ways ; and a 
* motor,' notes from those in connection with which mus- 
cular attention is at its best. It is remarkable that in all 
of v. Kries's recognitions, the method of learning was 
probably by visual note-reading, — piano, violin, etc., — 
while his non-recognitions — his own voice, voice of others, 
steam whistles, lip-whistling, etc. — are apparently in cases 
in which the auditory indications did not include such sys- 
tematic visual attention. Now on the supposition that 
v. Kries is a ' visual,' that the pitch elements of the atten- 



448 The Mechanism of Revival, 

tion in his case are most readily stimulated from the centre 
for sight, we have a clear application of our law. 1 Further, 
v. Kries was unable to recognize tones before he learned 
musical 'naming/ which, it is natural to suppose, was at 
first visual. The case of musical alexia already quoted 
from Brazier, shows the importance of a single class of 
notation memories, although it involved the loss, not 
of tone recognition, but of musical execution ; 2 (5) one of 
v. Kries's cases of 'absolute hearing' seems to be, from 
what he reports of it, motor in its type : a young woman 
who recognized tones when sung only by means of 'internal 
repetition,' to herself, of the notes sung (das Bediirfniss 
bestandy sie innerlich nachzusingen). 2. This innerliches 
Nachsingen, in a case where the real note is already heard, 
is probably motor, a supposition supported by the fact that 
the woman was a 'skilful singer herself.' Her quicker 
recognition of piano tones might be because of the motor 
practice in hand execution ; (6) this point of view affords 
us an additional reason for the fact, which all admit, that 
the best recognitions are for notes of moderate pitch, — 
not very high or very low ; for, being of most frequent 
occurrence, these notes exercise the attention most, and so 
get most easily and readily accommodated to. And it is 
also easy to see that, for this reason, their discrimination 
becomes finer and better ; (7) in the experiments already 
referred to, Fere found different dynamogenic effects to 
follow the hearing of the different notes of the musical 
scale, and the greatest effect to follow the notes in the 

1 Of course, such an application is only an illustration; the details of the 
individual's life and education — the questions 'why?' and ' to what extent ?' 
he is visual, motor, etc. — make any single case extremely complex. 

2 Loc. cil., p. 363. 

3 Loc. cit., p. 273. 



Pitch Recognition. 449 

middle of the gamut ; this is nothing short of a demonstra- 
tion of variations in the a element in attention for differ- 
ent pitches. 

Finally, if ' motor associates ' be at the bottom of pure- 
tone recognition, we would expect something of the same 
kind in the case of colour and odour qualities. This is the 
sphere of Lehmann's results in Benennungsassociation to 
which v. Kries appeals. Now Fere claims to have demon- 
strated this very point, i.e., that colour discrimination and 
recognition are improved by muscular exercise. He found 
it possible to bring back purple recognition to purple-blind 
hysterics, simply by muscular movement. It is a ready 
deduction, also, from the opposite fact that the different 
colours, beginning with red, have diminishing dynamogenic 
effect as measured on the squeeze-dynamometer. 

The details now cited, in the case of speech and tune 
revival, may be taken as detailed examples of the application 
of my general theory of assimilation to detailed instances. 
The position of the theory as regards recognition of 
tones may be stated in the words of James, quoted from 
his review of my earlier article : " It offers a basis of 
mediation between the two theories of Recognition over 
which Hoffding and Lehmann have recently waged war. 
One theory, stated in its radical form, says that a thing 
looks familiar to us when it recalls to us its past self. The 
other theory says it looks or sounds familiar when it recalls 
its past surroundings. The difficulty with the latter view 
is, that the supposed surroundings fail to become explicitly 
conscious when the recognition is confined to the bare 
'sense of familiarity.' How do we know, then, that they 
are at all tending to revive ? But Professor Baldwin, in 
2 G 



45 o The Mechanism of Revival, 

making them sink to the level of mere motor associates 
of former acts of attention, gives a good reason why our 
consciousness of them should be so indistinct, and why at 
the same time we should so unmistakably greet the sensory 
experience which they accompany as one already ours." 1 

An informal criticism by Professor Hbffding is answered 
in another place. 2 Wallaschek 3 objects to my view, that 
as all persons have the requisite factors, all should have 
absolute tone recognition. But the reason they do not is, 
I think, not a fault of their reproduction, but of their per- 
ception. Some cannot recognize tones again, because they 
do not closely distinguish them in the first instance, except, 
perhaps, when they occur together. 

It may be well to note, finally, as among the minor 
questions which this general theory of recognition answers, 
is that of so-called 'paramnesia,' — the false recognition of 
new localities, interiors, etc., the sense that an event has 
happened to one before. It is due to the artificial or acci- 
dental stirring up of an old attention series. Any new 
experience which gives exactly the same strains, etc., in 
the attention complex, as an earlier experience, would 
seem familiar, at the same time that it did not seem 
objectively identical. 

1 The Psychological Review, L, 1894, p. 210. 

2 See p. 472. 

8 Zt.fur Psych., VII., March, 1894, p. 68. 



CHAPTER XV. 

The Origin of Attention. 

§ i. Voluntary Attention. 

The foregoing examination of current theories of devel- 
opment has served to throw into relief the elements of the 
problem. It has also shown that a theory of adaptation 
must have reference to the repetition of stimulations, 
fundamentally, not of movements ; so far a presumptive 
proof of my theory, which is the only one, as far as I 
know, — based as it is upon the work of Darwin and 
Spencer, — consciously drawn to supply this want. 

The three psychological stages or levels at which we find 
consciousness getting new accommodations have already 
been pointed out, 1 and the claim made that the 'law of 
excess,' enunciated above, applies to each and all of them. 
I shall now take them in inverse order for closer ex- 
amination. The first question is, accordingly : How is 
the conscious person able to perform a new movement 
voluntarily ? 

The first remark is this : To make any movement vol- 
untarily, the attention must be fixed upon some kind of an 
idea which represents this movement. I do not care to 
repeat the analysis which I have published elsewhere, 2 and 

1 Above, p. 180. 2 Handbook, II., Chaps. XII., XV. 

451 



452 The Origin of Attention 

which James has also made, much more forcibly, 1 of volition 
back to its last citadel — voluntary attention to an idea. 
Everybody, it seems, now admits it. If the object of 
volition, then, is a movement, an idea that means the 
movement, must be attended to. 

But in the case of learning a thing for the first time the 
movement required is not an old, but a new one : 2 hence 
it cannot be a mental image or memory of the movement, 
to which the attention is directed ; it must be an external 
movement or event, of some kind, which in some way 
manages to send its dynamogenic influence into the motor 
channels required. 

Now to acquire a movement seen, or in some other way 
externally setup, — this is exactly conscious imitation. 
The problem then reduces itself to the process of per- 
sistent effortful imitation; and we have to ask how atten- 
tion to a movement seen, for example, enables the child or 
man to come to perform this movement himself. 

The process of persistent imitation, as far as its mechan- 
ism is concerned, has been depicted and figured above. 3 
The point essential to our present topic has been only 
casually mentioned, however, i.e., that the difference be- 
tween ' simple ' and ' persistent ' imitation, of the try-try- 
again type, is that, in the former, an earlier muscular 
movement is repeated without variation, while in the latter, 

1 Princ. of Psychology, Vol. I., Chap. XI. 

2 Unless, indeed, it has been accidentally performed before. I have already 
admitted that many useful acts are acquired by such happy accident, and it 
will be seen later that the ' excess ' discharge is of use mainly in increasing 
these happy hits. But no one will deny that the ' hits ' occur mainly through 
the child's imitations in cases of complex action, such as speech, writing, 
sewing, etc. 

3 Chap. XIII., § 2. 



Voluntary Attention, 453 

the earlier movement is modified in such a way as to 
approximate, more and more closely, the movement-copy 
attended to. 

In persistent imitation the first reaction is not repeated. 
Hence we must suppose the development of a function of 
co-ordination by which the two regions excited respectively 
by the original suggestion and the reaction first made, co- 
alesce in a common more voluminous and intense stimulation 
of the motor centre. A movement is thus produced which, 
by reason of its greater mass and diffusion, includes more 
of the elements of the movement seen and copied. This 
is again reported by eye or ear, giving a new excitement, 
which is again co-ordinated with the original stimulation 
and with the after-effects of the earlier imitations. The 
result is yet another motor stimulation, or effort, of still 
greater mass and diffusion, which includes yet more ele- 
ments of the ' copy.' And so on, until simply by its in- 
creased mass, including the motor excitement of attention 
itself, — by the greater range and variety of the motor ele- 
ments thus enervated, — in short, by the excess discharge, 
the 'copy' is completely reproduced. The effort thus suc- 
ceeds. (See Fig. XIV., above, in Chap. XIII., § 2.) 

This, it is evident, is just the principle of 'excess,' and 
it is very easy to find in it the origin of the attention. The 
attention is the mental function corresponding to the 
habitual motor co-ordination of the processes of heightened 
or ' excess ' discharge. The exact elements which it in- 
cludes have already been pointed out, and they will be 
spoken of again. 

Let the child once withdraw attention from his copy, 
let him be distracted by bird or beast, and woe to his 
chance of learning the new movement. The whole con- 



454 The Origin of Attention. 

glomerate conscious content falls to pieces and he goes 
back to be a creature of suggestion. But let him keep on 
attending — strongly, faithfully, well — and note his actions. 
His whole physical personality gets concentrated in con- 
joint, then allied, then unified, then convulsive discharge 
upon the member which, by habit or previous use, is nearest 
to the copy requirement. He rolls his tongue, bites his lip, 
sways his body, works his legs, winks his eyes, etc., until 
every scheming nerve and tendon bends to do the task. 
His blood-vessels, even, fill toward the hand he works with. 
This occurs only in attention, and this is the excess wave 
by which here in the highest consciousness, as there in 
the lowest organism, accommodation to new stimulations is 
secured. 

A direct examination of the infant's earliest voluntary 
movements shows the growth in mass, diffusion, and lack 
of precision which this theory requires. In acquiring the 
associations of elements involved in successful handwrit- 
ing, 1 the young child uses hand, then hand and arm, then 
hand, arm, tongue, face, and finally his whole body. In 
speaking, also, he ' mouths ' his sounds, screws his tongue 
and hands, etc. And he only gets his movements reduced 
to order after they have become by effort massive and 
diffuse. I find no support whatever in the children them- 
selves, for the current view of psychologists, i.e., that 
voluntary combinations are gradually built up by adding 
up earlier voluntary movements, muscle to muscle, and 
group to group. This is true only after each of these 
elements has itself become voluntary. Such a view im- 
plies that the infant, at this stage, has a kind of separate 
consciousness of the different muscles, including those 

1 See the details given above, Chap. V., § 2. 



Voluntary Attention. 455 

which he has never learned to use, which is false ; and is 
able to avail himself of muscles which he has not learned 
to use, which is equally false — not to allude to the fact 
that it leaves suspended in mid-air the problem as to how 
the new combination, intended and dwelt upon by atten- 
tion, gets itself actually carried out by the muscles. 

When muscular effort thus succeeds, by the simple fact 
of increased mass and diffusion of reaction, the useless 
elements fall away because they have no emphasis. The 
desired motor elements are reinforced by their agreement 
with the ' copy,' by the dwelling of attention upon them, 
by the pleasure which accompanies success. In short, the 
law of survival of the fittest by natural, or, in this case, 
so-called ' organic ' selection, assures the persistence of the 
reaction thus gained by effort. 

I may merely note in passing, also, that this theory of 
the physical process underlying volition is not open to the 
objections commonly urged against earlier views. How 
can we conceive the relation of mind and body ? The 
alternatives heretofore current are three :. either the 
mind interferes with brain processes, or it directs brain 
processes, or it does nothing ; these are the three. Now, 
on the view here presented, none of these is true. The 
function of the mind is simply to have a persistent pres- 
entation — a suggestion, a 'copy.' The law of motor 
reaction, plus the accumulated excess, does the rest. The 
muscles express the influence of the central excitement ; 
this sets inwards as more excitement, which we call atten- 
tion and emotion, and this the muscles again express ; and 
so on, until by the law of lavish outlay, which nature so 
often employs, the requisite muscular combination is se- 
cured and persists. In the words of Ziehen, " the appear- 



45 6 The Origin of Attention. 

ance of the concomitant psychical processes themselves is 
the only fact that needs explanation. . . . The fitness 
of actions is quite conceivable as the result of natural 
laws." * 

Besides the general fact that this view makes the stimu- 
lus or copy the essential thing for reproduction, it takes 
another step as important for psychology, I think, as the 
former is for general biology : the identification of vol- 
untary attention with motor reaction, at once habitual, in 
the main, but yet 'excessive,' in part, in the centres of 
highest co-ordination. Attention is, in the main, an accu- 
mulation, due to habit. 

■ This is considered a grave question by many who forget 
that whatever the voluntary life is, every child has to pass 
into it from the involuntary life, without a miracle ; and it 
may be well to present some general considerations, in 
addition to the facts of infant life now mentioned. 

i. It should be remembered, I may repeat, that the 
problem of adaptation is really the problem of selection. 
How does an organism select the stimulations which are 
profitable to it ? It is in answer to this question that the 
' excess ' function is postulated, and has been in the ' in- 
creased nervous discharge ' of biological theories of the 
Spencer-Bain type. Now in attention we have, undoubt- 
edly, the one selective function of consciousness. Who 
claims anything else ? Whatever attention may do besides, 
all the selections which consciousness makes are due to it. 

1 Physiol. Psychology, p. 274. Ziehen recognizes the essential sameness of 
the selecting process for reflex (phylogenetic) and voluntary (ontogenetic) 
selections. He says : " In both cases the process of selection is the essential 
factor in the development of this fitness. In the case of reflex action . . . 
this selection is essentially a phylogenetic process : in the case of [voluntary] 
actions, it is an ontogenetic process." 



Voluntary Attention, 457 

We have, therefore, the requirement that these two things 
should be connected in theory, i.e., the adaptations of 
lower organisms, and the selections of consciousness. 
Now it only gives further strength both to the theory of 
the biological selections of the lower organisms, and to 
that of the conscious selections of the higher, if we find 
that one psycho-physical principle runs through the entire 
development. 

2. Farther, the conscious_ value of a stimulus to the 
organism, as a whole, is £lea sure-pain effect. This we 
have identified with some form of psycho-physical pro- 
cess, in the nervous centres, which tends to discharge 
in the excess wave. In this again, as has been said, I am 
following the best theories of the past (Darwin, Bain, 
Meynert). If now my proposition concerning attention 
be true, it would follow that in the higher representative 
processes, attention is the great locus of hedonic conscious- 
ness. It is only necessary to reflect upon the conditions 
of 'ideal tone' — the pleasures of the intellectual and 
emotional life — in the exposition, for example, of Ward 
and the Herbartians, to be convinced that this is true. 
Developmental considerations enter here to complicate the 
case ; 1 but it is sufficient to note in this place, that pleasure 
is, in lower organisms, a sign of vital profit, and, by its 
discharge in the excess wave, an agent of adaptation ; and 
the same is true of intellectual and sentimental pleasure 
and profit. They indicate conscious adaptation by the 
phenomenon of attention, which is the genetic channel of 
an excess wave the same in kind. All the evidence which 
goes to show that no movement can be made unless the 
attention gets fixed upon some idea that represents this 

1 See below, § 3 in this chapter, on the ' Development of Attention.' 



458 The Origin of Attention. 

movement, and that no movement can be prevented upon 
the representation of which (itself or by proxy) the atten- 
tion is fixed — all this evidence shows also, that attention 
is some kind of generalized motor phenomenon. General- 
ized, because it bears equally on all presented contents. 
All initiation of voluntary movement is a matter of atten- 
tion, and all voluntary inhibition or control of movement a 
matter of withdrawal of attention. Now this is just what 
the excess wave ought to do — come to the aid of that 
which claims by highest right the aid of accumulated 
habit, that which, by this aid, is selected for doing, chosen, 
willed ; and by its withdrawal to prevent that which should, 
by the same tests, be ruled out and denied. 

§ 2. Reflex and 'Primary ' Attention. 

I have elsewhere argued for the view that reflex atten- 
tion is an affair of motor association. The facts so evi- 
dently show that there is no mental initiative in the case 
of a violent drawing of attention — as by a clap of thunder, 
or a flash of light — that the problem is, not to prove that 
the entire psychological phenomena is a change in the con- 
tent of consciousness, but merely to determine what kind 
of a change it is. I have proposed to call consciousness 
when occupied with such reflex attention 'reactive,' since 
the essential thing about reflex attention is the attitude or 
reactive condition in which one finds himself as soon as 
his surprise — after such a clap of thunder — allows him to 
ask himself the question. Certain muscular tensions, vary- 
ing somewhat with the kind of sensation or image to which 
his attention is drawn — this seems to be all he finds. It 
seems quite in the line of fact, therefore, to say that reflex 



Reflex and 'Primary^ Attention. 459 

attention is a consciousness of a group of muscular and 
organic processes fixed in certain forms by habit. 

The earliest form of attention is that directed upon sense 
qualities. It may be called 'primary attention,' in the phrase 
of late writers (Hoffding, Ladd), or \ conation,' considered 
as the active side of consciousness. It is by indulgence 
only that the term ' attention ' is used for it, since when 
we use that word we have in mind so distinctly the exact 
tensions and contractions habitual in our developed lives 
of attention. But if the general view which I am advo- 
cating is true, we should expect to find, in all conscious- 
ness, the presence of such a motor element ; and while in 
any particular case the 'motor associates' may not be 
special enough to give well-marked tone to the content, 
yet it should, in its real nature, be called a phenomenon of 
attention. The place of this early attention may be made 
plainer in the next paragraph. 

§ 3. The Development of Attention: Sensori-Motor 
Association. 

Assuming the answer now given to the question of 
the mechanism of speech, considered as a typical volun- 
tary function, some additional considerations arise which 
had not been suggested, as far as I am aware, before 
my first publication of them, 1 and which bring us back 
to our problem of the development of attention. 

In the first place, I find in my own case and from 
experiments with others, that the presence or absence 
of elements of movement in the consciousness of a word 
depends in many individuals largely upon the direction of 

1 See the article already mentioned in the Philosophical Review, II., 1893, 
pp. 385 ff. 



460 The Origin of Attention, 

the attention} If the attention be directed to the vocal 
organs, — either one's own, or some one's else, — move- 
ments of the tongue, lips, and larynx are clearly felt in the 
organs, sometimes also by touch, and may be seen. If, on 
the other hand, the attention be directed to the ear, and the 
words be thought of as sound, these muscular sensations 
fall perceptibly away or disappear. This indicates that 
there are two great speech types, a motor type and a 
sensory type, according as the attention is given in one 
direction or the other — a distinction of types now familiar 
in connection with reaction-time experiments. 

The reaction time is, in a great percentage of cases, 
shorter when the attention gives a so-called * motor ' re- 
action, i.e., is directed to the reacting member, rather 
than to the signal. I have experimented to some extent 
with a view to finding in what per cent of individuals 
one kind of hand reaction is normal as against the other 
kind. The results show that, among uninstructed groups 
of students, reacting for the first time in the labora- 
tory, about one-quarter of the entire number, when ques- 
tioned immediately after giving a series of sound-hand 
reactions, were clearly conscious of having paid attention 
to the movement of the hand. The average time of their 
reactions is considerably lower than the general average. 
This result shows clearly, not only that the difference in 
time of the two kinds of reactions is a real difference in 
many persons, but also that there are individuals who 
normally react most readily, and most effectively, in one 
way or the other. The bearing on speech is this : it 
becomes at once evident that the most rapid speakers are 

1 Paulhan notices the influence of the attention (Joe. cit., p. 43), but does 
not inquire into it. 



The Development of Attention. 461 

generally, ceteris paribus ■, 'motors' in their type. The 
direction of the attention serves to arouse the organs of 
speech in advance, by an influence, the nature of which is 
still to be explained. 1 

Now certain questions arise here which are directly 
pertinent to our present topic : Is a person motor, visual, 
or auditory, in his speech, and in his reactions generally, 
because he has strengthened a particular kind of memories 
by the prevailing concentration of his attention upon them ? 
Or does he give motor or sensory attention and reaction, 
because of the predominant strength of a certain class of 
his memories ? Probably both of these positions are true ; 
and each of them is of great importance in the education 
of speech, and other motor functions, as well as for the 
theory which I am developing. The case seems to be the 
exhibition, on a large scale, of what we find to be true of 
the relation of attention to sensations generally. Increased 
intensity of sensation tends to draw the attention ; and the 
attention increases the intensity of sensations. It is one 
of those processes of ■ reasoning in a circle ' which charac- 
terize the growth of body and mind together. Another 
instance is this, for which we have already seen some 
probable reasons : pleasure arises from healthy function, 
while healthy function is directly assisted by pleasure. 

The relation which we have now discovered, however, be- 
tween a person's 'type,' and the movements and habits of his 
attention, is capable of a clear psycho-physical explanation. 

We know that increasing intensity of sensation liberates 
energy increasingly toward the motor centres. A strong 

1 To quote my own case again — I find it impossible to think of a French 
sentence without keeping my attention on the visual picture of the printed 
signs ; but I can follow a German sentence by memories of speech movements 
with no trace of visual attention. 



462 The Origin of Attention. 

sensation tends to excite more movement than a weak 
one. It is probable, therefore, that a given degree of in- 
tensity of each particular sense-quality involves a motor 
ingredient, as an element in its conscious value — be it in 
part due to a setting-back process from the motor centres 
themselves, or in whole to the stirring up of revival pro- 
cesses in the kinaesthetic centres. The distinction be- 
tween sensory and motor consciousness is largely logical ; 
all consciousness is both. Every sensation reverberates 
outwards in the muscles, and this muscular resonance 
reacts back upon the sensory factor. But it is clear that 
the largest amount of the motor ' ingredient ' attaches to 
the most intense sensation. 

Now we also know that the exercise of attention involves 
a large amount of motor process ; its constant and necessary 
accompaniments are motor. Consequently the rising tide 
of motor incitation due to the rising intensity of sensation, 
is an increasing stimulus to the attention, by a radiation of 
processes in the centres of movement. So we have a valid 
reason for the general fact that an increase of intensity 
of sensation tends to draw and hold the attention. 

On the other hand, the ordinary opinion is true, that 
the idea of a movement is already the beginning of that 
movement. In the light of this principle it is easy to see 
that, when I turn my attention to a sensation, I in so far 
start into more vigorous existence the motor ingredients 
and associations of that sensation. This in turn tends to 
bring out more intensely the sensory ingredients, and so the 
second aspect of our * reasoning in a circle ' is made clear ; 
i.e., that attention heightens the intensity of sensations. 1 

1 After the original publication of the article containing this position, 
Professor Hoffding, in a private letter, called my attention to the following 



The Development of Attention. 463 

This process of radiation, or mutual overflow, among the 
different motor centres — if they be different — is not 
hypothetical. All theories demand it. It is simply a ques- 
tion, in any special case, as to how far the circle of influ- 
ence of one motor process may extend to neighbouring 
fibres and cells. And if my theory be true, that attention 
is just the most habitual of all forms of motor reaction — 
because extending far back in the race history of organic 
accommodation — then the direct arousing of the attention 
by changes in mental content is fully explained in the way 
I Suppose. 

To put the matter in a nutshell — just in as far as the 
motor ingredient of a mental content of any kind is large, 
that is, in as far as the sensory ingredient is intense, 
just to this degree will the direction of the attention be 
secured, and to this degree also will both the ingredients 
be intensified by this act of attention. The two facts, 
therefore, that intensity draws attention, and attention 
increases intensity, may be stated in terms of a single 
principle which I venture to call, in view of the doctrine 
of association already explained, the ' law of sensori-motor 
association,' i.e., every mental state is a complex of sensory 
and motor elements, and any influence which strengthens 
the one, tends to strengthen the other also. 



quotation from his Outlines of Psychology (p. 316), which clearly takes the 
same general ground as to the cause of heightened intensities when attention 
is aroused : " It is possible that impulses return from the centres with which 
the voluntary concentration of consciousness is linked, to the centres of 
sensuous perception (as in other cases to motor centres), in which way their 
effect may be strengthened. This would be the physiological form of the 
psychological fact that an idea becomes clearer if we give ourselves up to 
picturing it." (Italics mine.) See also his reference to Wundt (Physiol. 
Psychologic, I., pp. 233 f.). 



464 The Origin of Attention. 

The reflex attention which follows upon increased in- 
tensity of sensory excitation may be considered, therefore, 
in conformity with what has already been said, the return 
wave of revived motor associates ; and the increased in- 
tensity which follows the direction of the attention, is due 
to the direct influence of this return wave, by the reverse 
association. 1 

This principle also goes far to explain the relation to 
each other of the two so-called laws- which are usually 
stated independently in connection with reaction times : 
(1) greater intensity of stimulus diminishes the reaction 
time, and (2) motor reactions are generally shorter than 
sensory. Both are ready deductions from the Maw of 
sensori-motor association.' As for the first law, that more 
intense stimulation gives a shorter reaction than less in- 
tense, the reason of it is now evident. It is because the 
more intense stimulus arouses more and stronger motor 
associates ; or, put physiologically, because it has greater 
dynamogenic effect, and so facilitates motor discharge, both 
directly into the reacting muscles, and indirectly by its 
readier influence in getting the attention. 

Now as for the second fact, which holds for the majority 
of people, its explanation also follows. Experiments show 
that the reaction time is shorter when the signal is fore- 
known, and the attention is consequently not drawn to it, 

1 Wallaschek (Zeit. fur Psychologie, VII., heft I, March, 1894, p. 67) 
criticises my view on the ground that only in persons of the motor type 
— of speech, for example — would there be the necessary • motor associates.' 
But this is the reverse mistake to that made by Fere, noticed above, who says 
that the law of dynamogenesis makes it necessary that all should be ' motors ' 
in type (cf. footnote on p. 436, above). Both fail to distinguish between the 
general dynamogenic influence of a stimulus, which, by the law of ' sensori- 
motor association,' implicates the attention, and, on the other hand, the kines- 
thetic motor images of memory, which represent particular movements. 



The Development of Attention. 465 

but is left free to seek some further facilitating cue. This 
cue is found, of course, in persons accustomed to depend 
upon their motor memories for various voluntary actions, 
in the thoughts of the movements actually to be made in 
reacting. And so the * motor reaction ' is directly prepared 
for. In these cases, a particular kind of motor associa- 
tion is emphasized by the direct act of attention. The 
motor associates are pictured, dwelt upon, emphasized 
beforehand, the motor centres are put into a state of high 
potential, the stimulus is left to discriminate itself without 
attention — and thus the reaction time is shortened. It is 
evident that in the sensory reaction, part, at least, of the 
dynamogenic influence of the stimulus goes with the atten- 
tion, for the discrimination of the signal, etc. ; while, in 
the motor reaction, it all goes into the reaction, which is 
already prepared for by motor attention. 1 

It is an evident corollary*, also, that only in persons of 
the motor type would the motor reaction be shorter than 
the sensory ; for it supposes a ready habit of using motor 
memories mainly in voluntary movement. Persons trained, 
however, to use auditory and visual memories as the in- 
strument of attention, find their reaction time lengthened 2 



1 It is only what we would expect that, when the stimulus (signal) is not 
intense enough to carry its own discrimination, either the reaction takes place 
upon a false stimulus, or the attention shifts from the movement, and the time 
is lengthened. 

2 Cases in which the sensory time was shorter than the motor have, in fact, 
been reported by Cattell {Phil. Stud., VIII., 1892, p. 403), Flournoy {Arch, 
des Sci. Phy. et Nat., vol. 27, p. 575, and vol. 28, p. 319, quoted in Rev. 
Philos., April, 1893, p. 444), and Baldwin {Medical Record, April 15, 1893, 
p. 455). The explanation given in the text was proposed by me in the paper 
cited. See my extended report of results, with discussion of those of Cattell 
and Flournoy, and a new case, in The Psychological Review, II., 1895 ('Studies 
from the Princeton Laboratory,' p. 259). 

2 H 



466 The Origin of Attention. 

when they come to pay close attention to the movements 
which they are about to make. 

Applying this thought to the rise of speech and its 
method, we find abundant reason for the variety of types 
found among adults. Visual, auditory, and motor memo- 
ries of words date back to early childhood, and do not 
arise synchronously. Visual pictures of figure arise and 
get comparatively fixed in childhood some months before 
the child begins to speak or write, as is shown by its rec- 
ognition of simple figures, animals, and later, letters. Its 
auditory images, however, date back still farther; this is 
seen in the very early recognition of words heard. Special 
motor memories, on the contrary, are the latest of all. 
The ability to trace outlines which have been already 
recognized, 1 arises only after considerable progress has 
been made in speaking, and the progress in speaking is, in 
turn, relatively much later in its rise than visual and audi- 
tory recognition. So the probable order in which these 
different elements of the speech faculty would come under 
the jurisdiction of the 'law of sensori-motor association* 
is about this : auditory, visual, speech-motor, hand-motor 
(writing) memories. And a similar genetic analysis might 
be made out for other complex activities, if the facts were 
carefully observed. 

This means that auditory and visual memories get a good 
'start' on the other varieties in the genetic process. They 
acquire considerable influence over the attention, which is 
largely reflex at that early period, and they become in turn 
relatively easy of revival, before the specific motor memo- 
ries are well begun. Here is sufficient reason for the 
existence of auditory and visual speech types. Habits 

1 What I have called 'tracery imitation ' above, Chap. V., § I. 



The Development of Attention. 467 

thus arise which, on the mental side, express the readiest 
sensori-motor associations. They amount to what some 
have called ' pre-perceptions,' or better, perhaps, 'pre-ap- 
perceptions.' On the physical side these habits represent 
preferential dynamic tensions among those paths of dis- 
charge whose functions merge, in common, in that of the 
attention. The law signalized above tends, of course, as 
life advances, to consolidate these particular sensori-motor 
couples ; and so one particular kind of attention becomes a 
permanent trait of the mental life, unless the other con- 
nections, which are subsequently brought into use, be of 
sufficient strength to supersede that originally most used. 
This latter, however, may happen in any of several in- 
stances : either from inherited tendency, or from the 
strength of other motor habits ; or, in course of time, 
by dint of continued practice in one selected kind of 
attention. 

It would seem, accordingly, that the ' auditory speech ' 
type should be found most frequently among unliterary 
people, and among those who have not had extended 
linguistic training, or large practice in writing and read- 
ing. The particular influences which are lacking in this 
type are present in the training which the attention gets 
in people of the ' motor type.' 1 

We have now reached, by the psychological and genetic 
analysis of speech, a result which, it is evident, confirms 
our general theory of attention. The law of ' sensori- 
motor association ' is a generalization on the side of con- 
sciousness, from particular cases of dynamogenesis, each of 
which shows, on the nervous side, the working of the law of 

1 The important educational applications of this topic are reserved for my 
later volume. 



468 The Origin of Attention. 

' selection.' It is just by and for this, as we have seen, that 
attention has developed. It is a reaction of motor character 
upon sense qualities and mental contents generally, vary- 
ing in its degree of ease and effectiveness, according to 
the amount of habit and structural growth. On the other 
hand, the law of * selection ' is, if my exposition be true, 
a generalization of the nervous process by which each of 
such habits^gets started, as representing a new accommo- 
; dation of the arganism to its stimulations. 

Closer observation of states of attention also leads us 
to note some more facts and their explanations. We find 
on examining consciousness, that attention is not a fixed 
thing, a faculty, any more than are memory or imagina- 
tion. Yet in much of the literature of late years, in which 
the ' faculties ' have been scouted, I know of no author 
who has applied his own criticisms consistently to the at- 
tention. Attention is still treated as a constant quan- 
tity, a fixed thing, the same for all the exercises of it, 
and for all the contents to which it gives its reaction. 
Memory, on the contrary, is now known to be a func- 
tion of the content remembered ; and not a faculty which 
takes up the content and remembers it. So we have 
no longer one memory, but many : visual, auditory, motor 
memories. Yet the very same thing is true of attention ; 
we have not one attention, but many. Attention is a 
function of content ; and it is only as different contents 
attended to, overlap and repeat one another, that they 
have somewhat the same function of attention. 

It is easy to see, however, why it is that attention has 
been left largely untouched in the recent reduction of 
mental functions to changes in content. It is for just the 
same reason that the notion of self has been left over by 



The Development of Attention. 469 

criticism likewise, as I showed in part above. 1 The reason 
is a genetic one. It is evident that here, as in many other 
cases, we have to note the tendency of many sensory 
stimulations to discharge themselves through common 
motor channels. The contrast between pleasure and pain 
tends, of course, to make a great line of division between 
the motor associates of some contents and those of others ; 
such as that between reaching and withdrawing move- 
ments. As the senses develop, further divisions arise. 
But it nevertheless remains true that a balance of motor 
contraction, reverberation, effort, is common to all con- 
tents, and so becomes part of the fixed expression of all 
definite states of consciousness. This fixed grouping of 
muscular elements is, in its reaction upon the content 
which arouses it, the fixed element in attention (certain 
tensions of brow, jaws, skin of head, etc., — the A element 
in the formula given above for attention 2 ) ; and this makes 
attention seem to be a faculty of constant value. So it is 
that certain organic and muscular feelings contribute a 
certain sameness of value to the sense of self. 

But this is not all. The actual content of attention 
feeling is more than half different from sense to sense. We 
have — i.e., I have — a content so different when I attend 
to a sound from that when I attend to a light, that it is 
with the greatest difficulty that I find any strains or 
stresses in head, body, or limb quite the same in the two. 
And when we come to the difference between attention 
to any such sense content and attention to an ideal con- 

1 See above, Chap. XI., § 3. The recent chapter of Bradley (Appear- 
ance and Reality, Chap. IX.) is a remarkable exception to this charge, 
however. 

2 Chap. X, § 3, p. 313. 



470 The Origin of Attention. 

tent, — even though the latter be the memory of the very 
same sense-thing, — the whole feeling of attention is again 
extraordinarily changed. In all these cases the content 
felt as attention is motor ; but it is yet as varied as all the 
other habitually varied motor responses which have been 
found useful in the race history of the organism. Its vari- 
able elements are the a values of our formula. 

Very cursory observation of certain animals shows these 
facts in forms fixed by their varied habits of life. One 
has only to ride an intelligent horse regularly to be con- 
vinced not only that most of his mental processes are 
conducted through his ears, — an effect exaggerated, per- 
haps, by the ' blinders ' which are put over horses' eyes 
when in harness, — but also that his attention is auditory. 
He shows his hopes, fears, expectations, curiosities, etc., 
by ear movements. In the rabbit and other animals in 
whom the olfactory lobes are largely developed for pur- 
poses of utility, a distinct type of memory and attention 
is probably developed in connection with smell, an olfac- 
tory type. The constant movements of the tip of the 
snout in many such animals when exploring for food, etc., 
by smell, shows the development of delicate smell-motor 
reflexes analogous to our eye-motor reflexes and the horse's 
ear-motor. Attention in these cases is probably reactive 
largely, but for that reason its direct connection with one 
sense is all the more simple and striking. 

Cases from pathology, also, show the actual dependence 
often of a particular motor function upon the single sense 
which trained the attention in the learning of this action. 
Bastian 1 quotes the case of an aphasia patient, who spelt 
aloud a word wrongly when he wrote it {candd for cat), but 

1 Brain as Organ of Mind, pp. 60-62. 



The Development of Attention. 471 

at the same time, pronounced it correctly, as he heard it. 
This means that his spelling movements, letter by letter, 
had been learned in association with the making of the 
letters and the sight of them, while the learning of the word 
pronunciation, as a whole, has been in connection with its 
sound. 

But further still, in the same line. I do not think that 
we ever — even in successive attentions to the very same 
thing under the most uniform conditions — have exactly 
the same attention feeling twice. Why should not atten- 
tion, like everything else, be subject to the changing 
effects of habit and accommodation ? Indeed, it is the 
very outcome and exponent of these principles, as I 
have just been arguing. And then, too, dynamogen- 
esis, the basis of all the excess energies which are crys- 
tallized into habits, still works on, and is working on in 
every attentive reaction which we make. For all these 
reasons, we see that no two acts of attention can be just 
the same. 1 And the variable element is the a of our 
formula. 

One additional point may be noted here merely ; it gets 
enforcement in the following chapters. We would expect 
this change in motor reaction content, from act to act of 
attention, to have some equivalent in consciousness ; some 
equivalent apart from change in the particular content itself 
which stimulates the attention — some generalized, vague, 
unanalyzable feelings. And so we have found. Recognition 
is one such feeling, and Belief is another. I have argued 
independently over them both — apart from the genetic 

1 I think it would not be difficult to test this theory of attention by the 
dynamogenic method of experiment suggested by Munsterberg, The Psycho- 
logical Review, 1894, 441 ff. 



472 The Origin of Attention. 

aspect of the case — and found them to be just this — 
felt attitudes toward particular contents. 1 



§ 4. Voluntary Acquisition and Control. 

We are now in a position to see that voluntary move- 
ment has three distinct stages of development in each 
individual. We find the mind at first occupied with an 
object, presentation, or stimulus, which starts a muscular 
reaction, either native, acquired, or at random. Then a 
little later we find the mind occupied with a presentation or 
idea of the movement thus made, which, with its associates, 
tends to stimulate the corresponding motor processes, and 
thus to bring about the same movement. And at last we 
find the mind occupied with an object again, for the attain- 
ment of which the movement is a necessary but now a 
subconscious means. 

The original ' end ' of volition, therefore, is simply the 
image or picture which starts the imitative reaction. Sug- 
gestion turns out to be an original motor stimulus in voli- 
tion, as truly as in the lower activities. The child attempts 
to speak, for example, with no attention to his organs of 

1 Chap. X., § 3. On Belief, see my Handbook, II., Chap. VII.; the 
genetic theory of belief is reserved for the later volume of ' Interpretations.' 
The doctrine of Recognition, based on the law of ' sensori-motor association,' 
was published in the Philos. Review, July, 1893. Professor Hoffding, in a pri- 
vate communication, makes the criticism that, on my view, we would con- 
fuse two qualities which had been repeated the same number of times. This 
would mean that we have no differences of attention for the different sense 
qualities. But it is evident that that is not true, if I am right in saying that 
the actual motor content is different for each quality, and that we so have 
different attentions, just as we have different memories, etc. His criticism 
shows — what I said above — that even the best psychologists still look upon 
attention as a relatively fixed ' faculty,' rather than as a shifting function of 
content. 



Voluntary Acquisition and Control, 473 

speech. He then learns that it is by muscular effort, by 
persistent imitation, that he must proceed. Accordingly, 
the muscular movement now becomes his end. He strains 
to set his vocal organs properly. His efforts to control the 
organs, however, throw him, at first, into great confusion 
and failure. But after more muscular control is acquired, 
the third stage gradually follows, as the movements become 
habitual. The end is now again a picture or object, and 
the muscular consciousness falls into the background, as, 
for example, in our developed adult speech, when we think 
only of the ideas which we wish to express. 

The theory of motor development now worked out 
throws much light also on the whole vexed question of 
muscular control — ■ the regulation of movement in amount 
and direction, and its suppression, etc. It is easy to see 
that the material of volition, the ideas or copies attended 
to and imitated, are the means of holding the course of 
each movement in check by association. I can repeat a 
movement only because I am able to reinstate in memory, 
the feeling of it, the copy elements of it. But by asso- 
ciation, as we have seen, other elements, such as visual, 
or auditory, or touch, memories, may stand for the mus- 
cular memories. The whole management of a movement, 
therefore, depends upon the getting hold by the attention 
of the series of positions desired for the limb moved, and 
this can be done only by filling up the attention with the 
proper copy elements of sight, hearing, or other, which 
release the proper series of motor discharges, and these 
discharges only. And negative control, or inhibition, rep- 
resents, in general, the limitations which old organic ways 
of action impose upon new ways : the new must conform, 
if possible, to old organic * copy.' 



474 The Origin of Attention. 

The current theory of ' control ' lends itself directly to 
this view, hinging, as it does, upon the matching, term by 
term, of the movements being accomplished with a re- 
membered series, whether of sight, sound, or what not. 
The control of handwriting described above is a good 
instance. 1 The current theory, however, lacks all account 
of the process by which the series to be matched is vividly 
held up for voluntary imitation. 

This lack we are now able to supply. The view of atten- 
tion given in what precedes, teaches us that the motor 
reaction of attention is a function of the content attended 
to, on the one hand ; but, on the other hand, it is a part of 
the motor process in which the whole content finds its 
dynamogenic expression. The office of attention, there- 
fore, is that of fixing the content steadily, on the sensory 
side, and at the same time of releasing the associated 
discharge movements, on the motor side. Attention has, in 
each case, as we have seen, grown up in exactly this way, 
both as an expression of motor reverberation from typical 
and constant accommodations, and also as itself the very 
beginning, by the law of ' excess,' of the useful discharges 
which, in their acquisition, got to be associated with the 
content in question. 

Attention is the go-between between the copy imi- 
tated, and the imitation which copies it. It is, therefore, 
the central and essential fact in all voluntary muscular 
control. 

This theory is so important in the sequel, and so instruc- 
tive in its applications, that I take space for its summary 
statement here. Its development is not necessary to the 
clear statement of our general evolution theory. I shall 

i Above, Chap. V., § 2. 



Voluntary Acquisition and Control, 475 

accordingly return to it in detail in the later volume, which 
deals with applications and inferences. 1 

1 I intimated this theory of control in my article in the Philosophical Re- 
view, II., p. 406, from which I may quote : " The correlation of various 
images in the attention, through their respective 'motor ingredients,' is 
necessary for voluntary activity; and where a particular class of images is 
lost, the damage it works in the mental life is not alone the narrowing of the 
content of consciousness, but it is in many cases the withdrawing of that sup- 
port, without which the voluntary function can not proceed at all. It is the 
coordination of the attention, therefore, — what I have elsewhere called 
' volitional apperception/ — that every one of the incoming sensory elements 
must have part, at least, of its regulating effect upon the efferent discharge. 
This is shown so clearly, as a matter of fact, in the elaborate article by Pick 
on the loss of voluntary movement by certain anaesthetics when the eyes or 
ears are closed {Die sogenannte ' conscience musculaire] Zeitsch. fiir Psych., IV., 
1892, 161 ff.), that I need not do more than recognize the support which my 
article gets from his. A collection of cases which show the extreme depend- 
ence of attention and voluntary movement, in persons of the visual type, upon 
vision, is made by Dr. Ireland in Journal of Ment. Sci., January, 1893, pp. 
130 f." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Summary: Final Statement of Habit and 
Accommodation. 

§ I. Summary of Theory of Development} 

After the foregoing detailed statements of the facts of 
development, and the solution of certain particular genetic 
problems, we may come to a general synthesis. What is 
the least that we can say about an organism's develop- 
ment? Everybody admits that two things must be said: 
first, it develops by getting habits formed ; and second, it 
develops by getting new adaptations which involve the 
breaking up or modification of habits — this latter being 
called accommodations. 

The law of habit may now be stated generally in some 
such way as this : Habit is the tendency of an organism to 
continue more and more readily processes which are vitally 
beneficial. 

This principle we have found an axiom in biology 
and psychology. In psychology great instances of it are 
readily cited — instinct, emotional expression, the perform- 
ance of movements pictured in the attention, even atten- 
tion itself. In order to habit, it has become evident, the 

1 This section is not intended as a resume of the book and should not be 
considered so, but only of those points which are needed for the remaining 
sections of this chapter. 

476 



Summary of Theory of Development, 477 

organism must have contractility — ability to make a re- 
sponse in movement to a stimulus — and then it must 
have some incentive to make and keep making the right kind 
of movement. The essential thing about habit, then, is 
this : the maintenance of advantageous stimulations by the 
organism s own movements. Now what is the incentive to 
the right kind of movement ? This question carries us 
farther. 

Three answers are possible. The only incentive may be 
the actual stimulus, altogether outside the organism, and 
the right movement may be only a chance selection from 
many random movements. This is the ordinary biological 
theory. The stimulus is supposed to ' come along ' very 
often, and, moreover, to be very varied in its kind, locality, 
etc. ; so that by repeating happy chance movements, habits 
are formed, and by compounding the habits, these habits 
become complex and varied. So the creature develops. 
On this view development is entirely an expression of the 
one principle of Nervous Habit. 

The second answer says : the incentive is in part, as 
before, outside the organism, that is, the external stimulus 
must remain constant ; but the organism, after the first 
reaction to the stimulus, tends to repeat its lucky reactions 
again. This is the psychological theory. It finds in this 
tendency to repeat lucky movements the nervous analogue 
of pleasure, and makes it with the principle of excess 
discharge, following upon pleasure, the additional thing. 
There is thus an internal organic 'incentive.' By this the 
creature 'goes out,' and secures its own repetitions or 
avoidances, but only after lucky chance adaptations. This 
I have designated — in the only form in which it has been 
held — the Spencer-Bain theory. 



478 Habit and Accommodation. 

But this latter theory, superior as it is to the purely 
biological or ' repetition ' view of the biologists, has had in 
its statement a radical defect, the intimations of Darwin — 
who nowhere, to my knowledge, fully expresses an opinion 
— alone excepted. It has held, in Spencer and Bain, that 
the pleasure or pain process is a reflex of the reacting 
movement. This, I have argued above in detail, cannot be 
the case ; for movements themselves reflect pleasure or 
pain only as they serve as stimuli, reproduce stimuli, or are 
associated with stimuli. On the contrary, the stimuli as 
such are the agents of good or ill, pleasure or pain ; and 
this pleasure or pain process — index, as it is, of the fun- 
damental vital processes — dictates the very first adapted 
movement toward or away from certain kinds of stimula- 
tions. This is the third answer and the valid one. Other- 
wise the principle of excess — as in the form of the ' height- 
ened nervous wave' of Spencer — only serves to confirm 
in habits the lucky adaptations already hit upon. 

How shall we further conceive the process whereby, from 
many movements thus generally adapted, some are selected 
as special adaptations, or particular motor functions ? This, 
it is clear, is the question of Accommodation. It occurs by 
means of excess reactions. Jt is opposed to Habit in two 
ways : first, it has reference to new movements, — a pro- 
spective reference, — while habit has reference always to 
movements more or less old, a retrospective reference, — 
and so it runs ahead of habit ; and second, it tends, by the 
selection of new movements, to come into direct conflict 
with old habitual movements, and so to disintegrate habits. 
Let us look, then, at accommodation also more closely, 
gathering up what has gone before in earlier chapters. 

In general formula : Accommodation is the principle by 



Summary of Theory of Development. 479 

which an organism comes to adapt itself to more complex con- 
ditions of stimulation by performing more complex functions} 

Various functions have been shown in what proceeds to 
illustrate this principle ; all functions which the individual 
has learned. Learning to act is just accommodation, noth- 
ing more nor less. Speech, tracery, handwriting, piano- 
playing, all motor acquisitions, are what accommodation 
is, i.e., adaptations to more complex conditions. The 
common thing about them all is evident from the fore- 
going statement of the requirements of development : the 
maintenance of stimulus by the excessive motor discharge 
which it stirs up. This is Imitation. In brief, any reaction 
whatever, no matter how produced, — by accident, by sug- 
gestion, by obedience, by volition, by effort, under stress 
of pain or excitement of pleasure, — any reaction by which 
a useful stimulus is hailed back and enjoyed, or a dam- 
aging one fled from and escaped, — any such is a case of 
accommodation, and falls under the theory of imitation 
now expounded. 

But continued accommodation is possible only because 
the other principle, habit t all the time conserves the past 
and gives points d'appui in solidified structure for new 
accommodations. Inasmuch, further, as the copy becomes, 
by transference from the world to the mind, capable of in- 
ternal revival, in memory, accommodation takes on a new 
character — a conscious, subjective character — in Volition. 
Volition arises as a phenomenon of ' persistent imitative 
suggestion,' as I have argued. That is, volition arises 
when a copy remembered vibrates with other copies re- 
membered or presented, and when all the connections, in 

1 Compare with these statements of Habit and Accommodation, those given 
above", pp. 216, 217. 



480 Habit and Accommodation. 

thought and action, of all of them, are together set in mo- 
tion incipiently. The residue of motive is connected with 
what we call attention, and the final co-ordination of all the 
motor elements involved, is volition, or choice. The phys- 
ical basis of memory, association, thought, is, therefore, 
that of will also — the cerebrum, — and pathological cases 
show clearly that aboulia is fundamentally a defect of syn- 
thesis in perception and memory, arising from one or more 
breaks in the copy system whose rise I have sketched in 
what precedes. 

§ 2. Interaction of Habit and Accommodation. 

We have seen — to proceed farther on our way — that 
there is one type of reaction, and only one, to which these 
two principles have a common application : reactions whose 
issue tends to reinstate the very stimulus which started the 
reaction. Accommodation is there, in such a reaction, since 
the advantageous stimulation stands a better chance of 
repetition if the organism tends thus to get it ; but since 
this repeated stimulus again stimulates to action, and 
action again follows — there also is habit. So accommo- 
dation, by the very reaction which accommodates, hands 
over its gains immediately to the rule of habit. And this 
is the universal rule. 

How true, as a fact, this form of adaptation is ! A 
fact often noticed, always admired, never explained — 
that organisms move toward the source of light and heat 
and colour ! How can an organism get such a splendid 
property — that of being so modified by what is good for 
it, that it itself responds in a way to get it again, and, 
then, by thus getting it again, makes its future enjoyments 



Organic Centralization. 481 

of it sure and easy? This I have given theories to ex- 
plain : by the law of * Excess ' the stimulus is got again, 
and by the law of ' Sensori-motor association ' the process 
is fixed in easy habit. 

The interaction of these two principles, Accommodation 
and Habit, — Excess and Association, — gives rise to a 
two-fold factor in every organic activity of whatever kind. 
In organisms of any development — where a nervous sys- 
tem, say, is present, — the environment being a changing 
one, every structure, with its function, represents a habit 
which is being constantly modified by the law of accommo- 
dation. But these modifications themselves, as we have 
seen, provide again for their own habituation ; so there is 
a constant erosion, and a constant accretion, to the net 
attainment of the organism. And each function can be 
understood only in the light of both the influences which 
have contributed to it. Impulse, for example, is two-fold ; 
instinct is two-fold ; attention is two-fold ; emotion is two- 
fold. Is not this a reconciliation in principle of the 
opposed theories of these functions, one saying that these 
great organic habits came only by composition, and the 
other that they came only by selection, intelligent or 
organic ? 

§ 3- Organic Centralization. 

We have now seen how great habits are formed. 
Heredity further fixes them, and at the same time renders 
them more prominent, i.e. t as instincts, by erasing the 
evidences of their origin, and abbreviating the phylo- 
genetic process in the growth of the individual. I use the 
phrase 'organic centralization' to denote this great out- 
come of development, — the differentiation of functions 
21 



482 Habit and Accommodation. 

by lines of adaptation which run apart, as far as their par- 
ticular offices and structural products are concerned, but 
which are yet centralized. For they are centralized when 
considered together, as constituting, in unity and plan, the 
common life of the organism. When considered each for 
itself also, as a well-knit whole of many co-ordinated units, 
the same centralization is shown about a smaller centre ; 
such as the movements involved in a particular instinct, 
or the series of movements of the facial muscles in an 
* expression.' There would possibly be no need for further 
exposition of this point, since it is a corollary from the 
general theory already sketched, were it not that it has 
certain applications. 

There are two such applications which are new, I think, 
and which serve to gather into one point of view conflict- 
ing opinions regarding two of the most refractory facts in 
current psychology. I refer to the question of the exist- 
ence of special nerves for pleasure and pain, or either ; and 
to the attention. 

The question arises : If accommodation is secured by a 
special form of reaction called ' excess,' what relation does 
this reaction itself sustain to the principle of habit ? 
Does the excess function itself also become centralized ? 
Does it tend to become a separate co-ordinated function, 
as other motor discharges do ? 

It is to be expected that, in as far as the environment in 
which an organism lives is constant, any accommodation 
reaction would, taken for itself, tend to become a habit. 
As far as the presumption goes, we would expect to find 
two great kinds of reaction implicated with pleasure and 
pain. The pain reaction would tend to withdraw the 
organism from the stimulus which gives pain ; and the 



Organic Centralization. 483 

pleasure reaction would tend to bring the organism into 
closer relation with the stimulus which gives pleasure. 
These two kinds of reaction would be possible for any 
muscular group whatever, and all that would then be 
required would be some sense organ which would distin- 
guish between the conditions of stimulation which regu- 
larly give pleasure — reacting to them with the forward 
moving reaction, — and those which regularly give pain — 
reacting to them with the withdrawing movement. This 
is directly confirmed by the views of Meynert, Richet, 
Miinsterberg, and Bain, as far as the character of the 
movements is concerned ; and by the results of Dessoir 
and Goldscheider, as to the differentiation of the sense of 
pain. It then becomes a matter of indifference whether 
actual pain nerves are found or not, in connection with any 
particular function. That depends upon what the race 
conditions of stimulation have actually been. If the pain 
stimulus has been regular and peculiar enough, possibly it 
has got itself a special apparatus ; research must decide. 
But if not, then not. This latter, the negative, is probably 
the case with pleasure. The stimulus to pleasant function 
is so general and normal, that pleasure has not become 
well ' centralized ' either in the organism, or, as is very 
plain, in consciousness. Yet in the special case in which 
a function has been perpetual, important, and uniform, 
there we do find pleasure as acute and definitely localized 
as pain is, i.e., in the sexual function, as Nichols has pointed 
out. It is not at all improbable that this function has a 
pleasure nerve apparatus. So it is possible and probable 
that pain is both a sensation, and a qtiale or ' tone ' of other 
sensations, emotions, etc. ; a sensation, — if it has developed 
its own apparatus by reacting to definite, well-localized 



484 Habit and Accommodation. 

pain-giving stimulations constantly enough ; a quale, — be- 
cause the organism is never completely balanced in its 
environment, and the stimulations representing misad- 
justment and pain are not all constant. So the accommo- 
dation function of pain, in connection with all possible 
stimulations, must go on just the same whether there be a 
sensation pain or not ; especially in the sphere of thought, 
sentiment, and the attentive life, since this is the latest, 
most complex, and least uniform kind of accommodation. 

On the physical side, too, the matter is clear. The 
excess process at the basis of pleasure and pain, finds 
channels of outflow which serve over and over again for 
the reaction required to repeat the pleasure, or stop the 
pain. The same connection thus serving for many in- 
stances, becomes well-worn and habitual ; and so a connec- 
tion is formed — a circuit — for pleasure or pain, like the 
ordinary sensori-motor circuits. If light, for example, con- 
sidered as constant stimulation, serves to develop, for its 
different intensities, an organ — the eye, — and certain 
nerves, which react only to it, as luminous; why can it not 
also develop, in connection with certain of its intensities, 
a further organ and nerve which react only to it as painfid? 
It is, indeed, inevitable that, under favourable conditions, 
such a pain-apparatus should be developed. 

This recognizes the distinction between 'pleasure and 
pain ' on one side, and ' agreeableness and disagreeable- 
ness,' on the other, as developed by Miinsterberg. Pain 
as sensation-content is distinct from pain as quale of other 
contents. On my view, this is a distinction due to develop- 
ment. Pain, as sensation, is pain become habitual enough 
under constancy of stimulation, to have its own apparatus, 
i.e., it is pain as peripheral function. Pain, on the other 



Organic Centralization. 485 

hand, as quale of mental content generally, is pain of irreg- 
ular stimulation, or pain of accommodation, i.e., pain as cen- 
tral function. I do not agree, therefore, with Miinsterberg, 
in finding in the movements of flexion and extension, 
which my theory requires in common with his, the genetic 
sources of ' agreeable ' or ' disagreeable ' tone. The whole 
theory of development, as I have shown above, if it is 
to move at all, requires that this accommodation pain or 
pleasure be due, in the first instance, to stimulus, and that 
the flexion and extension movements be the organic mode 
of accommodation to the pleasure or pain-giving stimulus. 
Nevertheless, so great is organic complexity, when we 
come to take the principle of association into account, 
that, after all, in developed organisms, Miinsterberg may 
be right in making the flexion and extension movements 
themselves the direct basis of the agreeable and disagree- 
able quale. For we have seen in the case of emotion that 
movements at first purely purposive, serving utility or 
accommodation to stimulus, themselves get, by associa- 
tion, to represent the degree of success or failure in accom- 
modation, and so come themselves to give body to the 
emotion. In like manner, these flexion and extension 
movements may have passed, from being expressive or 
utility movements, to be the fore-runners of the condition 
which they at first served only to express. And it may 
well be that they are thus an intermediate link between 
quale pleasure-pain, and sensation pleasure-pain. This 
is supported by the evidence — as far as it goes — which 
locates the nerve apparatus of sensation pleasure-pain 
in the muscles. On this view, it is for reporting flexion 
and extension movements that this nervous apparatus has 
developed ; these flexion and extension movements stand- 



486 Habit and Accommodation. 

ing in place of the pleasure and pain-giving stimuli to 
which the organism has become accommodated. 1 

Now the same effect of ' centralization ' is seen in the 
attention, as may be gathered from the positions already 
taken. Attention has been defined as genetically the 
reverberation of the ' excess ' process as it has become 
fixed in habit. By the law of ' sensori-motor association,' 
this backward wave gets connected with all the sensory 
processes. Now just in as far as this wave is the same 
for different sensations, just in so far it tends to be 'cen- 
tralized ' in a constant function * — integrated into a habit 
— involving a regular set of motor phenomena, such as 
the wrinkling of the brows, setting of the glottis, etc., 
always found in acts of attention. The organism thus 
acquires a habit of accommodation, on a higher level. This 
is attention. When memory and imagination appear, this 
new form of response enables the organism to throw itself 
into attitudes favourable to the best reception and assim- 
ilation of material of all kinds. 

Yet as with pain, so here. This attention-habit, this 
centralized function, is not all that the attention is. The 
original excess function must be kept in view. No pre- 
liminary setting of attention is an adequate accommodation 
to an intellectual stimulus — an idea still to be received; 
it is adequate only to hold stimuli by which it has been 
before excited. Each new accommodation to idea carries a 
motor excess discharge of its own, and this swells back into 
the sense of attention, making each act of attention, and 
each sense-type of attention, different, as was said above. 

1 I may remark also, that this general position secures a number of minor 
explanations, which I do not stop to develop, — such as the contrast between 
' systemic ' and ' single-organ ' pleasures and pains. 



Organic Centralization. 487 

The terms of interaction of the two principles, finally, 
require that the reaction maintain its stimulus, and that 
this stimulus again repeat the reaction. The one type of 
reaction, therefore, which an organism must have, is a 
' circular' or stimulus-repeating one. We have found it 
best to name this type of reaction Imitation. This is the 
unit, therefore, the essential fact, of all motor-develop- 
ment ; and this shows the simplicity of the whole theory. 

The place of imitation has now been made out in a 
tentative way throughout the development of the active 
life. It seems to be everywhere. But it is, of course, a 
matter of natural history that this type of action is of such 
extraordinary and unlooked-for importance. If we grant 
a phylogenetic development of mind, reaction of the imita- 
tive type, as denned above, may be considered the mode 
and the only mode of the progressive adaptation of the 
organism to its environment. The further philosophical 
questions as to the nature of mind, its worth and its 
dignity, remain under adjudication. We have learned too 
much in modern philosophy'' to argue from the natural 
history of a thing to its ultimate constitution and meaning 
— and we commend this consideration to the biologists. 
As far as there is a more general lesson to be learned from 
the considerations advanced, it is that we should avoid 
just this danger, i.e., of interpreting one kind of existence 
for itself, in an isolated way, without due regard to the 
other kinds of existence with which its manifestations are 
mixed up. 

The antithesis, for example, between the self and the 
world is not a valid antithesis psychologically considered. 
The self is realized by taking in 'copies' from the world, 



488 Habit and Accommodation. 

and the world is enabled to set higher copies only through 
the constant reactions of the individual self upon it. 
Morally I am as much a part of society as physically I am 
a part of the world's fauna ; and as my body gets its best 
explanation from the point of view of its place in a zoologi- 
cal scale, so morally I occupy a place in the social order ; 
and an important factor in the understanding of me is the 
understanding of it. 

The great question, which is writ above all natural his- 
tory records, is — when put in the phraseology of imitation, 
— What is the final World-copy, and how did it get itself 
set? 



APPENDIX A. 

NEW OBSERVATIONS ON CHILDREN, REPORTED IN 
THIS WORK. 

1 Accompanying movements, 1 65. 

Assimilation, 308. 

Attention, in drawing, 87 ; in speech, 397, 453 f., 466. 

Bashfulness, 147 ff. 

Colour perception, 50 ff. 

' Contrariness,' 145 ff. 

Desire, 369, 370. 

Distance perception, 50 ff., 76 ff. 

Drawing by children, 83 ff. 

Dreaming, 137 ff. 

Effects of i recapitulation,' 32 f. 

Effort, in reaching, 58 ff. ; in holding up head and body, 389 f. 

Emotions, 137 ff. 

Epochs of development, 18. 

Expression, facial, 123; E. of pain, 143. 

Games, 360 ff, 383 ff. 

Generalization, 325. 

Handwriting, 91 ff. 

Imitation, by drawing, 87 ff. ; by voice and hands, 131 ; vocal and 

organic, 294; of persons, 115, 118 ff., 152 ff., 335 ff, 354, 357 ff, 

374 ff. ; persistent, 453 ff. 
Inhibition of movement, 127 ff. 
Lies, 337, note. 
Morals, 429. 

Movements, of infants, 81 ff. ; of weak-minded children, 407. 
New method of observation applied, 36 ff. 
Perception of distance and colour, 50 ff., 58 ff. 
Personality, suggestions of, see Suggestion ; growth of, 335 ff. 
' Physiological suggestions,' see Suggestion. 

489 



490 Appendix B. 

Reflection, rise of, 299. 

Reflexes, 81 ff. 

Recognition, of figure, 102; experiment on, 316; of pictures, 317, 333. 

Right and left-handedness, 58 ff. 

Self, sense of, 335 ff. 

Suggestion, in children, 105 ff., 299 ; S. of sensations, 108 f. ; physiolog- 
ical, 109 ff . ; of sleep, 109, 115 f . ; of position in bed, no; of 
sucking in sleep, 112; of a natural function, 1 13 f. ; of personality, 
115, 118 ff., 152 ff. (in bashfulness), 335 ff. ; of food and clothing, 
117 f . ; complex, deliberative, 126 ff . ; inhibitory, 143 ff . ; con- 
trary, 145 ff. ; experiments on, 383 f., 385, note. 

Sense, of locality on the body, yj ; of agency, 134 f. ; of self, 118 ff., 

335 ^ 
Sleep indications in infants, 140 f. 

Social sense, 120 ff., 156 ff. (in bashfulness), 338 £, 357 ff. 
Song, 440, note. 
Speech, 435, note ; 397, 456. 
Sympathy, 333. 
Tracery imitation, 87 ff. 
Unilateral reflexes, 82 f. 
Volition, 374 ff., 427 ff., 454 f. 
< Walking reflex,' 81 f. 
Weak-minded, movements of, 407. 



APPENDIX B. 

CASES OF THE USE OF THE RIGHT AND LEFT HANDS RE- 
SPECTIVELY, GATHERED FROM THE REPORT OF COLONEL 
GARRICK MALLERY, ON * SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG THE 
NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.' 1 BY LESTER JONES, B.A., 
FELLOW PRINCETON COLLEGE. 

" In the main part of Colonel Mallery's paper, where the cases 
cited are used as merely illustrative of the writer's own subject, 
the following data for the problem of right-handedness have been 
obtained : — 

1 First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1879-80. 



Appendix B. 491 



No. of Cases Left Hand Right Hand Both Hands 

cited used used used 

66 1 37 28 

"In about a thousand illustrations appended to the paper 
proper, the left hand is used distinctively alone twenty-three 
times. 

" In the same appendix, in a dialogue of a hundred and sixteen 
signs used, the left hand acts distinctively alone five times. 

" In the Natei narrative of seventy-five signs, the left hand is 
used distinctively alone three times, the right hand twenty-seven 
times. 

" In the Patricio narrative of sixty-six signs, the left hand is 
used distinctively alone three times, the right hand twenty times. 1 

" It is worth observing that in the dialogue and two narratives, 
making a total of about three hundred signs, or less than one-third 
of the thousand signs cited, we find the left hand used alone eleven 
times, or about one-half the full number of times occurring in the 
entire thousand cases. This would seem to indicate that the more 
reflective the thought becomes, the more the left hand figures, 
while in the isolated more unpremeditated forms, it is the right 
hand that invariably springs into action. 

" Two illustrations must suffice to show the general preference 
of the right hand over the left. In describing Indians conversing 
about the camp-fire, Mr. Mallery writes (p. 340) : ' Two Indians 
whose blankets are closely held to their bodies by the left hand, 
which is necessarily rendered unavailable for gesture, will severally 
thrust the right from beneath the protecting fold, and converse 
freely. The same is true when one hand of each holds the bridle 
of a horse.' Again, this preference is well shown in the gesture 
sign for sunrise (p. 371) : 'The forefinger of the right hand is 
crooked to represent the sun's disc, and pointed or extended to 
the left, then slightly elevated. 

" ' In this connection it may be noted that when the gesture is 
carefully made in open country, the pointing would generally be 

1 In the above series, only those cases have been considered in which the 
circumstances involved allow a choice of either hand. 



49 2 Appendix B. 

to the east, and the body turned so that its left would be in that 
direction.' 

" The two-hand movement in making a sign is used, perhaps, as 
much as the right hand alone ; yet in almost every case of the 
double-hand movement the right hand takes the initiative and 
plays the active role, with the left as merely supplementary. For 
example, the sign gesture for ' hard ' is made thus : open the left 
hand and strike against it several times with the right. 

"Again, in making the sign gesture for 'done,' hold the extended 
left hand horizontally before the body, fingers pointing to the right, 
and cut edgewise downward, with extended right hand, past the 
tips of the left. 

"Many signs appearing to be made by the left hand alone, 
on closer scrutiny can be included in the two-hand movement. 
For example, in the expression * three white men,' 'white men' is 
made first with right hand alone ; but to convey the meaning, the 
right hand must persist until the sign for three is made, which 
remains for the left hand to do. It is in reality a double-hand 
movement with the left to be used as necessity requires, supple- 
mentary to the right." 

Note by the Author. — It is evident that this report supports the view 
that the right hand was pre-eminently the ' expressive ' member in pre-historic 
times. The common signs among different tribes, found also in deaf-mute 
sign language, show that many of these forms of expression are not late con- 
ventions, but rather matter of real aboriginal usage. If, then, they date back 
to the period before the development of speech, we have much reason for 
believing that right-handedness is originally a one-sided expressive function. 
Cf. Chap. IV., § 2, above. 



INDEX. 



Aboulia, 398 ff. 

Abstraction, 328. 

Accommodation, effects of, 24; sugges- 
tion as A., 167 f. ; A. and Habit, 214 f. ; 
A. in expression, 230 f. ; in memory, 
292 ff. ; summary of, 477 ff. 

Adaptation, organic, 170 ff. ; current 
theory of, 180 ff. 

Adults, suggestions in, 135. 

Agency, sense of, 124 f. 

Agraphia, 398 ff., 409 f., 432 ff. 

Amusia, 440 ff. 

Analogies, of development, 15 ff. 

Animal, see Phylogenesis, Memory, Re- 
capitulation, Attention, Gregariousness. 

Antithesis, law of, 242 ff. ; A. and antago- 
nism, 245 ff. 

Aphasia, 398 ff., 409 f., 433 ff. 

Apperception, theory of, 308 ff. 

Apraxia, 311. 

Assimilation, theory of, 308 ff. 

Association of ideas, physical basis of, 
279 ff. ; origin of, 361 ff. ; sensori- 
motor, 459 ff. 

Attention, 87, 380; its genetic formula, 
312 f., 331 f., 395 f. ; origin of, 451 ff. ; 
voluntary, 451 f. ; reflex, 458 f. ; develop- 
ment of, 459 ff. ; animal A., 470 ff. ; A. 
as Habit, 486 f. 

Attitudes, motor, origin of, 221 ff. ; ha- 
bitual, 239 ff. 

Auto-suggestion, 138 f. 

Avenarius, R., 339 f. 



Baillarger, 434. 

Bain, A., 81, 177, 181 ff; 196, note; 356, 

note; 483. 
Balfour, F. M., 34, 206. 
Bashfulness, 147 ff. 
Bastian, 470. 
Bateson, 206, note. 



Belief, 323 f., 471 f. 
Bernheim, 168, 423. 
Binet, A., 39 f., 55, 273. 
Bradley, 469, note. 
Brazier, 440 ff. 
Brentano, 322. 
Broadbent, 103, note. 
Brown-Sequard, 72, note. 
Bunge, 273. 

Carpenter, 440. 

Cattell, J. M., 82, note ; 325. 

' Centralization,' organic, 481 ff. 

Charcot, 164, 404. 

Children, their games, 360 ff., 383 f. ; 

weak-minded, 407 f. ; see Infant. 
' Chumming,' by children, 358 ff. 
Class recognition, 330 ff. 
Clifford, 19. 

Colour, perception of, byinfants,39 ff.,5off. 
Conception, origin of, 322 ff. 
Consciousness, the origin of, 208 ff. 
Contrary suggestions, 145 f. 
Control, by suggestion, 144; voluntary, 

472 f. 
Criminal suggestion, 163. 
Cushing, F. H., 67, note. 



185, 233, 241 ff. ; 247, note ; 



Darwin, C. 
288, 347. 

Delboeuf, 355. 

Deliberation, 372 f. 

Deliberative suggestion, 126 ff., 372. 

Desire, 368 ff. 

Dessoir, 483. 

Development, analogies of, 15 ff. ; theories 
of, 170 ff. ; summary on, 477 ff . ; D. of 
the several functions, see Memory, 
Attention, Association, Speech, Hand- 
writing, Song, etc. 

Dewey, J., 79, note. 

493 



494 



Index, 



Direct nervous action, law of, 249 ff. 

Distance, perception of, by infants, 51 ff. 

Drawings, of children, 83 ff. 

Dreams, as emotion stimulus, 137. 

Dutrochet, 276. 

Dynamogenic method of child study, 

37 ^ 
Dynamogenesis, 165 ff. 

Echolalia, 403. 

Effort, rise of, 372 f. 

Egger, V., 36. 

Eimer, 271 f. 

'Eject,' 119 ff., 338 ff. 

Emotion, stimulated by dreams, 137 ; ex- 
pressions of, 223, etc. ; genetic theory 
of, 332 ff. ; of sympathy, 333 f. ; of self, 
334 ff. ; ethical, 341 ff. 

Engelmann, 271, 273, 276. 

Ethical emotion, genesis of, 341 ff. 

Exaltation of the senses, 140 f., 160. 

' Excess,' law of, 179 f., 189. 

Expectation, sense of, 326. 

Expression, functions of, 69 ff. ; motor E., 
221 ff. ; emotional E., 223 ff. 

Fechner, 65 ; 100, note. 

Fere, Ch., 44 ; 138, note ; 436, 448. 

Ferrier, 422. 

Flechsig, 423. 

Foster, M., 22. 

Franckl-Hochwart, 71, 419. 

Franklin, Mrs. C. L., 57, note ; 43, note. 

Galton, 206, note. 

Games, 360 ff., 383 f. 

General notion, origin of, 325 ff. 

Goldscheider, 93, note ; 98 ff., 483. 

Gowers, 420. 

Gregariousness, 18 f., 119 ff. 

v. Gudden, 424, note. 

Gurney, E., 356, note. 

Habit, effects of, 21; Suggestion as H., 
165 ff. ; H. and Accommodation, 214 f. ; 
law of associated H., 242 ff. ; as basis 
of unity, 286 ; in memory, 292 ff. ; sum- 
mary on, 476 ff. 

Handwriting, origin of, 91 ff. 

Hedonic, consciousness, 176 f. ; H. ex- 
pression, 237 ff. 

Hegel, 346, note. 



Hegler, 274. 

Heredity, 204 ff. 

Hodge, 272, note. 

Hoffding, H., 190, 197, 315, 449 f., 459; 

462, note ; 472, note. 
Hume, 330. 

Hypnotic suggestion, 158 ff., 425. 
Hysteria, 403 ff. 

Identity, principle of, 322 f. 

Ideo-motor suggestion, 130 ff. 

Idiots, 409 f. 

Imagination, origin of, 291 ff. 

Imitation, tracery, 86 ff. ; in infants, 130 ff. ; 
simple and persistent, 132 f., 375 f., 
392 ff. ; organic, 263 ff., 350 f. ; con- 
scious, 191 ff., 351 f. ; in animals, 297 ; 
classification of, 349 ff. ; plastic, 352 ff. ; 
method of observing, 357 ff. ; persistent, 

374 ff 

Infant ; I. Psychology, 1 ff. ; new method of 
studying, 36 ff. ; colour perception of, 
39 ff. ; distance perception of, 51 ff . ; 
right-handedness in, 58 ff. ; movements 
of, 81 ; drawings of, 83 ff. ; sense of 
agency in, 124 f. ; imitations of, 130 ff., 
373 ff. ; attention of, 87, 380. 

Inhibitory suggestion, 143 ff. ; facts of, 
294 f. 

Intra-selection, 31. 

' Introjection,' theory of, 339. 

James, W., 77, 193, 226, 229, 246, 253,376, 
392, 405, 449, 452 ; 76, note ; 79, note ; 
237, note. 

Janet, Pierre, 106 ; 355, note ; 378, note ; 
397. 4°4 £. 408, 434 ff 

Jastrow, J., 44, 188. 

Jones, Lester, 68, note ; Appendix B. 

Judgment, Brentano's view of, 323. 

Kant, 296. 
Kingsley, 15, note, 
v. Kries, 445 ff. 
Kiihne, 271. 
Kussmaul, 114, 438. 

Ladd, G. T., 79, note ; 135, 459. 
Lange's theory of emotion, 229. 
Lehmann, A., 42, 315, 449. 
Lichtheim, 114, 412 ff., 438. 
Liebault, 113. 
Liegeois, 116, note. 



Index. 



495 



Magendie, 44. 

Maine de Biran, 392. 

Mallery, 68, note ; Appendix B. 

Mantagazza, 261. 

Marshall, H. M., 28, 34. 

Mazel, 67, note. 

Memory, physical basis of, 279 ff. ; origin 

of, 291 ff. 
Method of child study, 36 ff. 
Meynert, 177 f. ; M.'s ' scheme,' 193, 422, 

483- 
Micro-organisms, behaviour of, 272 ff. 
Mills, 420, note. 
Mirror-writing, 99. 
Moll, 112. 

Movements, of infants, 81 ff. 
Miiller, Max, 36. 
Miinsterberg, 47, note; 65, note; 471, 

note ; 178, note ; 483, 484 f. 
Music, faculty of, 70 f. 

Nancy school, on hypnotism, 163, 164. 
Natural selection, place of, in develop- 
ment, 172 ff. 
Neo-Darwinian theory of heredity, 204 ff. 
Neo-Lamarkian theory of heredity, 207 ff. 
Nichols, H., 483. 

Obedience, lesson of, 343 f. 

Ochorowicz, 112; 119, note. 

O'Connor, J. T., 73, note. 

Ogle, 73, note. 

Ontogenesis, 1 ff. ; of volition, 373 ff. ; 

variations in, 20 ff., 426 ff. 
Oppenheim, 70, 419. 
Organic, selection, 174 f.; O. imitation, 

263 ff. 
Osborn, H. F., 23, note. 

Pain, suggestions of, 143 f. ; its nervous 
analogue, 176 f. ; Bain's and Spencer's 
views of, 185 f. ; as sensation, 483 ff. 

Parrot, 423. 

Paris school, on hypnotism, 158, 164. 

Passy, 396. 

Paulhan, 443 ; 460, note. 

' Persistent imitation,' 132 f., 374 ff., 
392 ff. 

Personality, suggestions of, 118 ff. ; its 
growth, 357 ff. ; 147 ff., 334 ff. 

Pfeffer, 274 ff. 

Phylogenesis, 12 ff . ; of memory and 
imagination, 319 ff. ; of volition, 385 ff. ; 
variations due to, 20 ff, 426 ff. 



Pick, 402, 416. 

Pitch, recognition of, 442 ff. 

Pitres, 416. 

Plants, movements of, 274 ff. 

' Plastic imitation,' 352 ff. 

Pleasure, its nervous analogue, 176 f. ; 
Spencer-Bain view of, 185 f.; as sen- 
sation, 484 f. 

Preyer, W., 39 f., 53 f., 81, 131, 297, 389 f. ; 
132, note. 

' Project,* 18 f., 119 ff., 336 ff. 

Psychology, race, 12 ff. ; infant, 1 ff. 

Punishment, function of, 343. 

Race psychology, 12 ff. 

Rapport, hypnotic, 161. 

' Ree volution,' Jacksonian, 402 f. 

Recapitulation, theory of, 14 ff. ; modifi- 
cations of, 20 ff, 426 ff. 

Recognition, theory of, 308 ff. ; class-R., 
330 ff. ; of pitch, 442 ff. ; absolute, 
442 ff. 

Reflexes, infants', 81 f. 

Reid, 389. 

' Release,' or ' trigger-' action, in plants, 

275 f- 
Ribot, Th., in. 
Richet, Ch., 178, 483. 
Right-handedness, origin of, 58 ff. 
Romanes, G. J., 71, 73 ; 199, note; 210 ff., 

218 ff., 261, 299. 
Ross, 416. 
Royce, J., 330, note ; 339, note ; 347. 

Schmidkunz, 106. 

Schneider, 111. 

Schultz, 271. 

Sedgwick, A., 32, 34. 

Seglas, 434 ff. 

Selection, natural, 172 f. ; organic, 174 f. 

Self, growth of notion of, 119 ff. ; 147 ff. ; 

emotion of, 334 ff. 
Sense-exaltation, 140 f. 
' Sensori-motor association,' 459 ff. 
Sentiment, growth of, 332 ff. 
Shinn, Miss M. W., 41, note ; 53. 
' Short-cuts,' theory of, 20 ff. 
Sighele, 282 f. ; 346, note ; 353. 
Sleep, suggestions of, 114 ff., 140 ff. 
Soltmann, 421 f. 
Song, 438 ff. 

Speech, 409 ff., 431 ff., 466 ff. 
Spencer, H., 181 ff, 276, 200, note. 



496 



Index. 



Spontaneity, Bain's doctrine of, 183 ff. 

Starr, M. A., 71. 

Stimuli, analogous, 253 ff. ; substitutions 
of, 257 f. 

Strieker, 98, 433, 443. 

Stumpf, 438. 

Subconscious suggestion, 135 ff. 

Substitution of stimuli, law of, 257 f. 

Sufficient reason, 323 f. 

Suggestion, 104 ff. ; physiological S.,109 f. ; 
sensori-motor, 114 ff.; of sleep, etc., 
114 ff., 140 ff. ; of personality, 118 ff. ; 
deliberative, 126 ff., 372; ideo-motor, 
130 ff. ; subconscious adult, 135 ff. ; of 
tunes, 135 ff. ; auto-S., 138 f. ; inhibi- 
tory, 143 ; pain-S., 143 f. ; control-S., 
144 ; S. of the contrary, 145 ff. ; hyp- 
notic, 158 ff. ; criminal, 163. 

Sully, 293. 

Sympathy, genesis of, 333 f. 

Tarde, G., 232 f. ; 346, note; 353 f. 

Thought, origin of, 322 ff. 

Tonnies, 348. 

Tracery imitation, 86 ff. 

Tunes, suggestions of, 135 ff. ; internal, 

438 ff. 
Types, mental, 432 ff. 



Unconscious writing, 406. 
Unity, sense of, 286. 

Variations, in ontogeny, 20 ff. 

Verworn, Max, 271 f., 276. 

Vierordt, 66, note ; 72, note ; 73, note ; 
422. 

1 Vitalism,' the new, 277 f. 

Volition, origin of, 367 ff. ; analysis of, 
367 ff. ; typical case of, 373 ff. ; phylo- 
genesis of, 385 ff. 

Waitz, 330. 

Wallace, A. R., 288. 

Wallaschek, 440 ; 464, note. 

Waller, A. D., 274; 414, note. 

Ward, J., 457; 193, note; 200, note; 

317, note. 
Weber, E. H., 65. 
Weismann, 31. 
Wernicke, 416, 438. 
' Will-stimulus,' 376 f. 
Wilson, Sir D., 59, note ; 66, note ; 73, 

note ; 74, note. 
Wundt, 106, 309, 315, 332. 

Ziehen, 107, 455 f. 



BALDWIN'S 

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